


Batman: The Dark Knight

by Ashton210



Series: RWBY STYLE [7]
Category: Batman - Fandom, RWBY
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-05-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:13:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 54,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24264889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashton210/pseuds/Ashton210
Summary: Batman: The Dark Knight with rwby characters.
Series: RWBY STYLE [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1751530





	1. 1 Start

Opens to a bright and sunny day over the city of Vale. It then closes in on an office building's large window as it shatters. Two men with clown masks are seen. One of them fires a cable across the street, and once the line is secured, the two slide across and lands on the lower roof across the street. The screen then cuts to a man standing on the corner with his back to the audience, holding another clown mask. A car pulls up and the man gets in, putting on his mask as he enters. Inside the car, two more men are wearing masks. The driver tells the crew in a familiar, yet annoying voice.

"Three of a kind. Let's go."

The second Clown looks up from loading his automatic weapon and realizes something. "That's it? Three guys?" he asks, sounding like Russel, much to the audience's further annoyance. Cardin reassures his buddy, "There's two on the roof. Every guy is an extra share. Five shares: plenty". "Six shares. Don't forget the guy who planned the job." Russel reminds him.

Cardin scoffs, "Yeah? He thinks he can sit it out and still take a slice. Heh, now I get why they call him the Joker". He cocks his weapon. The third clown pulls the car over in front of the Vale's First National Bank.

Back on the roof, one clown pries open an access panel. "So why do they call him the Joker?" he asks his partner, revealing it to be Dove. "I heard he wears make-up." He replied, it being Sky, thus completing the gallery of idiots. "Make-up?" Dove asks. Sky, pulling out some thick cables, explains, "Yeah, to scare people. You know, like war paint." Cut to inside, we see Cardin, Russel, and the third still unidentified clown get out of the car and march into the bank with guns.

Inside, one of the security guards look up, just as Cardin fired his weapon into the ceiling. Customers scream, and Russel hits one of the security guards in the head. As Cardin and the third guy rounds up the hostages, one of the tellers presses the silent alarm button beneath her window before being yanked from her station by the unknown clown.

Back on the roof, Sky watches the alarm ping on his scroll. "Here comes the silent alarm. (touches a button) And there it goes. Huh, that's funny. It didn't dial the police, it was trying to reach a private number." Behind him, Dove asks "Is that a problem?" Sky shakes his head, "Nah, I'm done." A silenced bang is heard and Sky slumps to the ground, revealing Dove holding a silenced pistol.

Dove picks up his bag and opens the roof access door and speeds down the stairs, to the basement. He opens the door and comes face to face with a huge vault. The unknown clown and Cardin move down the line of hostages and they start handing each hostage a grenade, to the disgust of the good guys. The screen temporarily enters the bank manager's office. Cardin says while the two are pulling the pins out with a smug tone, "Ok, so obviously we don't want you doing anything with your hands, except maybe holding on for dear life". The manager takes something out from under his desk showing his face to the audience.

*BLAM* a shot rang out as Russel is blown away, causing many of the students to wince, and showing Mercury with a shotgun in his hands, anger clear on his face. Cardin and the other guy dove for cover, and Mercury steps out of his office, gun in hand. The hostages scream, still holding on to their grenades for dear life. In the vault room, Dove is shown putting a drill to the vault. He spins the bit and slides into the metal door, but a massive electric shock rips through the drill, launching his body back, and getting a few laughs from some of the less mature in the group. In the lobby, Cardin and the other guy are seen cowering and moving to other places to hide as Mercury continues to fire, "Dead! You have any idea who you're stealing from? You and your friends are dead!"

Cardin asks, "He's out right?" The guy looks up for a moment in thought, then nods back. Cardin jumps out of cover to fire, but Mercury has the quicker trigger finger and shoots first, proving that only Archer and Deadpool can count. Cardin grunts as a buckshot clips his shoulder and falls back down on his ass. Mercury pumps his weapon, but it gets jammed. The clown gets up and shoots him in the legs, causing him to collapse.

Cardin gets back up while feeling his new injury "Where'd you learn to count?!", then he heads to the back.

We now see Dove at the vault door again, this time barefoot, and turning the tumblers with his hands stuffed into his shoes. Cardin walks in, and Dove remarks on the safety features "They wired this thing up with like 5,000 volts. What kind of bank does that?" Cardin replies "A mob bank. Guess the Joker's as crazy as they say." Dove shrugs, then grips the wheel and spins it, signifying his job's completion. Cardin looks around "Where's the alarm guy?" Dove shrugs again and said "Boss told me when the guy was done I should take him out. One less share, right?"

"Funny, he told me something similar" Cardin remarks coldly. His sentence caused many in the audience to freeze up in realization. Dove does as well "Wait n-" *BANG*. Dove collapsed dead, and Cardin steps over his corpse and into the vault.

Inside the vault, we see veritable mountains of lien. Cardin walks in, and starts taking all that he could carry, causing many of the thieves in the audience to salivate at the fortune they're seeing. Cardin then comes back to the lobby, straining under several duffel bags filled to the brim with cash. He dumps them into the growing pile at the floor near the main entrance.

Cardin, slightly winded from the workout he received, said "You know, if this guy was so smart he would have had us bring a bigger car." He then points his gun at the remaining clown's back. He then said, "I'm betting the Joker told you to kill me as soon as we loaded the cash." As he said this, his arm visibly shakes a bit.

The clown shakes his head and sighs as he starts moving to the side, "No. I kill the bus driver." His voice, while muffled, does have a few people wondering where they heard that voice before. Cardin just looks confused even through the mask. "Bus driver? What bus dri-" *SMASH* the tail end of a school bus bursts through the entrance, scaring a few people at the jump scare, and slamming Cardin into the money pile. The guy picks up Cardin's weapon, he won't be needing anymore. Another clown opens the rear door of the bus, "School's out, time to go." He looks at the corpse of Cardin, and chuckles a bit, "guy's not getting back up, is he?" his voice, in an amused tone.

Tai helps the last clown put in the lien into the bus. "That's a lot of money" he noticed. Once the last of them are in, Tai looks around confused "Hey man, where's the rest of the crew?" The clown in response shoots him in the chest. He died instantly.

The last clown looks around, sees the last bag of money, and drags it towards the bus, He then loads it inside, all while Mercury watches him. In the distance sirens are heard. Mercury coughs for a bit then says "Think you're smart, huh? The guy who hired you is just going to do the same. You know that, right?" The clown, after putting the last bag inside, slowly walks back towards the injured man. "Oh, criminals in this town used to believe in things... Honor. Respect. Look at you... what do you believe, huh? What do you believe in?!" The man crouches over him and slides a grenade into the man's mouth as he yelled the last word. He then states, "I believe that what doesn't kill you simply makes you..." He pulls off his mask, and Mercury, finally sees what he looks like.

It is Jaune Arc, however to everyone's horror, his mouth is scarred in a permanent, nightmarish smile while wearing white clown makeup over most of his face, with black surrounding his eyes. His hair is dyed green but with a few strands showing his original hair color, and when he smiled, his teeth are a yellow color, "...Stranger". This is the Joker.

Mercury's eyes go wide at seeing what laid behind the mask. The Joker gets back up, and strolls towards the bus, a purple thread is seen attached to his jacket. He climbs into the bus and shuts the rear door, trapping the string. The camera pans back to the injured bank manager and the audience sees the other end of the string is attached to the grenade pin, causing many eyes to widen. The bus then begins to move out the lobby.

As the bus pulls out, the pin is pulled, and Mercury's eyes became wide and was shaking in fear as to what would undoubtably happen next, much to Emerald's amusement. However, much to their shock the grenade didn't explode, but instead just spewed yellow smoke, showing it to be a gas grenade. Mercury, realizing what happened, pissed himself and fully collapsed, unconscious.

The bus pulls out into the open, showing a long line of other school buses. The School Bus slides into the line of identical buses heading away from the bank, all the while cop cars are seen racing down the street.

The next scene plays, showing a night view of Vale. From the top of a brick building a beam of light comes on. A patrolman looks up at the bat-signal and smiles, earning a few raised eyebrows from the more law-abiding audience members. A dealer is standing beside a car and spots the signal. He steps back and walks away, "No, man. I don't like it tonight." The buyer doesn't like what he heard, "What're you, superstitious? You got a better chance of winning the lottery than running into him!"

We cut to the inside of the Vale's Police Department, where detective Blake is seen making

coffee, watching a news show on the television and cat ears proudly on display. She sees the host, Lisa Lavender, talking to the mayor. "Mr. Mayor, you were elected on a campaign to clean up the city... when are you going to start?"

The mayor, one Peter Port tries to explain "Well, Lisa-", but she cuts him off. "Like this so-called Batman. A lot of people say he's doing some good and that criminals are running scared. That's he's a hero, but what kind of hero needs to wear a mask? You don't let vigilantes run around breaking the law, and yet, we hear rumors that instead of trying to arrest him the cops are using him to do their dirty work."

Peter tries to reassure her "I'm told our men in the Major Crimes Unit are close to an arrest." Blake smirks and looks back to her partner, "Hey, Adam. The Mayor says you're closing in on the Batman." Adam looks up, and answers while crumpling up a piece of paper, "The investigation is ongoing." He throws the paper at the trash. It rebounds off a board headed 'Batman Suspects', lined with pictures of Miles Luna, Casey Lee Williams, and a tall, hairy creature with a belt of some kind hung over its right shoulder and going to his left hip.

On the roof, Blake comes out with two cups of coffee and walks to her boss, Lieutenant Ozpin who, as is custom here, is near the signal. She hands Oz the spare cup and says, "Ever planning on seeing your wife again, Lieutenant?" He responds, with a small smile "I thought you had to go look after your mother, detective?" Blake sighs "They checked her back into hospital."

"I'm sorry." She shrugs, "Least there she's got someone round the clock. Unlike your wife." She looks at the bat-signal, "He hasn't shown up yet?" Ozpin looks up to the sky, at the signal. "Often doesn't, but I like reminding everybody that he's out there." She watches her boss in confusion, "Why wouldn't he come?" He looks back, smiling at her, "Hopefully... Because he's busy."

In a parking garage, we see two black SUV's pulled up in the top floor right next to a battered, white van. A tall man emerges, a man that is holding his trademarked cane and cigar, the crime boss, Roman Torchwick.

A bodyguard points at the sky. Roman looks up at the bat-signal and just shrugs it off. "That's why we bring dogs" he points out to the useless, in his opinion, goon. Another man opens the back door, and three enormous rottweilers emerge, growling.

The crime lord crouches and kisses his 'loyal' dogs on their heads "My little princes..." He looks to his men. "The Batman's invisible to you idiots, but my little princes here, they can find human meat in complete darkness." He proclaims proudly as he moves to the second car, reaches in and drags out a skinny, wild-eyed junkie by his hair. Said man is babbling in fear, "No...get 'em off...Get 'em off me!" those were the only words that could be heard.

Roman drags the man towards the shitty van. The rear doors open, and two armed thugs emerge, carrying guns, while a third one hovers inside the darkened interior. Roman yells "Look! Look what your drugs did to my customers!"

The guy still left in the van said "Buyer beware..." He steps out, revealing a rather tall, yet skinny man in a dark gray suit with a sack over his head. "I told your guy that my stuff would take you places. I never once said they'd be places you wanted to go."

Roman just glares at him. He noticed this and shrugs nonchalantly "If you don't like what I have to offer, you can always just buy from someone else. That's assuming He left anyone to buy from." The glare deepens. Suddenly, his dogs start barking.

One of the bodyguards start to get nervous, while turning the safety off his gun "He's here." One of the thugs, who was far from the main groups, suddenly was sucked into the darkness. In his place a shadow straightens out, revealing pointed ears like a cat or a bat in the limited night light. Roman saw what happened and says "My dogs. Are. Hungry! A pity that there's only one of you..." As if the universe wanted to prove him wrong, one of his men to his right disappears without a sound, and a second shadow took his place. Roman now looks worried.

Three more bat-shadows appear, much to Roman's growing concern, even the dogs stop growling. Suddenly *BOOM*, a hole erupted from the SUV next to the crime boss. The first bat-shadow steps into the light carrying a shotgun. Men scatter, and gunfire erupts on the roof floor. Roma turns as he hears one of his men screams and shouts "Loose the dogs!" A guard releases the dogs, and they race, barking all the while, towards a shadow. The first dog leaps and starts to maul on one of the bat-shadows.

Scarecrow ducks behind the van, holes continue to be punched in the side by shotgun blasts. He starts to climb into the driver's seat, but the muzzle of a gun gets pressed to the back of his head. A bat-shadow is seen behind him, but the guy just turns around and sprays with fear toxin that was hidden beneath his clothes. The shadow collapses to the ground, screaming his head off. He looks around and notices that these guys are all carrying firearms. "These guys aren't Him."

He whispers, "He doesn't use guns."

On a nearby edge, a black shape slams down, crushing a few parked cars. The debris field from the crash lowers down and reveals one of the most iconic vehicles in history: The Batmobile.

Scarecrow just replies in a deadpan voice "That's more like it."

Roman's remaining men shoots at the front of the car: the bullets spark off its monstrous surface, proving James' theory. Inside the Batmobile, it shows that no one is inside it. One of the screens flashed green while it reads 'LOITER'. After the shooters stop to reload, the screen switches to 'INTIMIDATE'. The Batmobile seems to do nothing for a moment, and then *BOOM* The Batmobile's front autocannons blast cars all around the men, but never hitting them directly.

A bat-shadow lines up his shotgun on a running bodyguard, but a gauntlet grabs the barrel and bends it downwards with a squeal of agonizing metal. The guy holding the trigger looks to his side and sees the face of the Batman. The REAL Batman. The shadow stumbles back in terror, leaving the bent shotgun in Batman's hand. Batman releases his grip on the now useless weapon, bears down on the dogs mauling another shadow, and draws his grapple gun, shooting it at the fake's leg and rips him from the dogs, saving his life. One dog is persistent though and hangs on as Batman pulls the unconscious man away.

Roman runs down the ramp towards the exit as Batman kicks the dog off of the fake. He gets into his car, and another dog locks its jaws around Batman's forearm, trying to rip it off. Batman swings the dog over his head and smashes its body against the ground.

The Dark Knight rises, and the van goes behind him. He can't turn in time and *BLAM*, he's slammed sideways by the speeding car. Inside the van, Scarecrow is driving and cheekily waves at him like he's just a simple passerby and hits the gas. Batman raises his hand and makes a saw blade come out of his palm and chops straight through the side door.

He pulls his hand out and chops again, but this time the thing gets stuck. Scarecrow steers towards a column. He can't free himself, so he turns a dial on his forearm, and explosive bolts blew, freeing his gauntlet. He drops from the van as it scrapes the column, barely missing him, and barrels down the circular exit ramp like a madman. He sees that he still has time to stop the escape, so he prepares to jump. A fake laying on the ground and watches as he climbs up to the edge of the ten-story corkscrew ramp and just stands there, waiting for something.

After the moment passed, he jumps off and falls...ten stories... some of the audience covers their eyes, thinking that he'll go splat on the ground when suddenly the van appears. He slams onto the roof, crushing it under his weight, a bit hurt but miraculously alive.

Later we see Roman's men lined up against the wall, bound with zip-ties, but the man himself is gone like a cockroach fleeing from a boot. The fakes are also bound, showing how he thought of these pretenders. Batman dumps Scarecrow next to the three of the fakes, and rips his bag off, finally showing his face to be Qrow Branwen.

One of the fakes yell out "We're trying to help you! Batman immediately debunks it "I don't need any help." His voice is so deep and gravelly that it's tough to make out what he said, or if his voice sounded familiar to any of them. Qrow smiles and says, "Not my diagnosis"

The fake looked incredulity at him as he gets inside his vehicle. "What gives you the right?! What's makes you so special?!" As the Canopy hisses shut Batman says, "I'm not wearing hockey pads." The fake looks down at his makeshift costume as the Batmobile roars past them and back into the night.


	2. 2

It's nighttime and Oz is seen trying to go through the gaggle of reporters outside Vale's bank as he makes his way inside the lobby. There he sees his forensics hard at work. Blake walks over him and hands him pictures taken from the surveillance cameras. "He can't resist showing us his face."

Ozpin looks at the grainy blow-up of the Joker's face, some sweat causing his clown makeup to run.

He states "Put this out, by morning I want one over the central holding, selling tickets. What's he hiding under that makeup?" He asked as he approaches a forensic photographer over one of the clown's bodies. He crouches to look at his clown mask. Batman then steps out of nowhere. Oz nods at Blake. She then gives an order "Alright everyone, give us a minute. Please, people!" The forensics and Blake leaves as she glances back at the two.

Oz hands Batman the evidence of the Joker. "Him again. Who are the others?"

Oz replied, "Another bunch of small timers."

Batman pulls a devise from his belt of magical bullshit and moves to the bundles of cash scattered near the clown's body. The device pings. He then picks up a bundle and hands it to his friend. "Some of the marked bills I gave you."

"My detectives have been making drug buys with these for weeks. This bank was another drop for the mob. That makes five, we've found the bulk of their dirty cash." Batman nods and says "Time to move in." Ozpin waves the photo. "What about this Joker guy though?" Batman just looks at him, "One man or the entire mob? He can wait." Boy, won't that bite him in the ass later on.

"We'll have to hit all banks simultaneously. SWAT teams, backup..." He holds up the bundle of lien. "When the new DA hears about this, he'll want in." Batman moves to the exit "Do you trust him?" "Be hard to keep him out." He shrugged while bagging the cash. "I hear he's as stubborn as you-" he looks back, but Batman is already gone.

The scene then changes to a penthouse suit of a tall hotel the following morning. It switches to the inside where we see Klein (Schnee butler) Sieben walking past the hallway, carrying a breakfast tray.

He stops at a still-made bed, then sighs and turns around, annoyed over what he has to do now.

The next scene is Klein getting out of a car and walking down rail yards, carrying a thermos. He is muttering to himself, no doubt for the wasted food that he had to throw out. He walks towards a railway bridge and stops at a large container that was sitting lopsided. Klein unlocks the doors and steps inside. The container was dark as he fumbles for a bit, banging his elbow in the process and swearing, to the gasp of the Schnee's as they never heard him using such language before, before a hiss is heard as the floor lowers.

The floor lowers on a giant piston and Klein steps off into a large, low-ceiling, bunker. The Batmobile sits in the middle. Machines: 3d printers, power tools, etc., dot the high-tech space. At one end, a person is sitting at a bank of monitors watching footage of the bank robbery.

"Be nice when Schnee Manor's rebuilt and you can swap not sleeping in a penthouse for not sleeping in a mansion." He jokes as he places a cup of coffee, poured from the thermos, in front of the man, now revealed to be Whitely Schnee.

It was true, the boy who is a pompous little shit stain in their universe, was a 34-year-old man, with clear defining muscles.

Whitely was busy stitching up a cut on his arm that he got from that dog, earning a gasp of from his sisters in the audience as well as a glare towards Roman for hurting their brother. Klein continues while taking the needle from him. "When you stitch yourself up you make a bloody mess."

Whitely simply smiles and says, "But I learn from my mistakes, Klein." Klein just shakes his head.

"You should be pretty knowledgeable by now, then." Whitley, and a lot from the audience, chuckles at the quip and smiles gently up at his father-figure "My armor... I'm carrying too much weight, I need to be faster." Klein nods and says, "I'm sure Mr. Polendina can oblige."

He looks at the wound in slight worry. "Did you get mauled by a tiger?" Whitley immediately tried to explain and preserve his masculinity "It was a dog. A big dog." He elaborated once he saw the laugh threatening to leave his lips.

He sighs in exhaustion "There were more copycats last night, Klein." Klein nods and tries to support those people, "Perhaps you could hire some of them and take the weekends off." He just shakes his head and tries to stand up, only for Klein to smack him upside the head and told him to sit his ass back still. "This wasn't exactly what I had in mind when I said I wanted to inspire people." His butler and friend just nodded, "I know sir. But things are changing, for the better even. Look at the new District Attorney..." Whitley points to a monitor: a handsome James Ironwood in a suit displayed. "I am. Closely."

"I need to know if he can be trusted." He tried to justify himself in the eyes of his friend, but Klein saw through the BS and looked at some of the other images: The DA at a meeting, him doing a speech during a campaign rally, helping an old lady get out of a cab.

A woman being escorted by James, showing it to be Glynda.

"Are you interested in his character... or who he surrounds himself with?" he points out. Whitley shrugs off the mild accusation. "Who Glynda spends her time with is her business."

"Well, I trust you're not following me on my day off." Klein tries to make joke of the frankly disturbing scene he was witnessing, getting a few to mildly chuckle, while Whitley comes back with "If you ever took one, I might."

Klein bites the thread off and examines his work. Then he looks at the scars crisscrossing Whitley's shoulders as Whitley begins to stand and put on his shirt. "Know your limits, Master Whitley." He said, afraid that one day, he will bite off more than he could chew. "Batman has no limits." Whitley answers back (Roman: "famous last words."), once he finishes up. "Well, you do, sir." Klein tries to convince him. He just shakes his head, "I can't afford to know them."

"And what happens the day you find out?" He asks. "Well. We all know how much you like to say, 'I told you so'." he shrugged, earning a few nods from the sisters. "That day, Master Whitley, even I won't want to..." The two begin to walk away towards the lift as the screen darkens, "Probably."

The screen lights back up and we see the inside of a courtroom, where James Ironwood bursts inside. His assistant, and girlfriend Glynda, looks up, annoyed. He apologizes to those in the room about being late while she whispers to him as he sat down, "Where were you?" James looks back at her with a playful grin, surprising those who knew him "Worried you'd have to step up?"

She glared at him, surprising no one, and replies "I know the case backwards." James pulls a large silver coin out of his pocket and grins. "Well then, fair's fair: heads, I'll take it. Tails, he's all yours." He then flips the coin and catches it. He shows Glynda the result, heads. Both Glynda's look astonished over how he just seemed to base his decision on chance with the one on screen asking, "You're flipping a coin to see who leads?" incredulously.

"it's my father's lucky coin. And as I recall, it got me my first date with you."

"I'm serious, James, you don't leave these things to chance." She said, getting a nod from most of the women in the audience. "I don't." he said in a sincere voice, as he gets up. "I make my own luck." James looks across at the defendant, Jacques Gelé.

Jacques looks at James with such a cocky smirk that many in audience just wants to beat the crap out of him for. "I thought the DA just played golf with the Mayor." He says condescendingly. "Tee-off is at 1:30. More than enough time to put you away for life, Sally." He replies, getting a few laughs. The bailiffs lead a man into the witness box.

James steps up, now is in his element. "With Carmine Falcone in Arkham prison, someone must've stepped up to run the so-called family." He starts off with, the man nodding in agreement. "Is this man in the courtroom today" Another nod. "Could you identify him for us, please?" James turns to Jacques, who is poker-faced. He smiles, believing that he's won. "You win, counselor."

"It was me." James's smile disappears, while the courtroom begins to make a fuss. He turns back to the witness in anger. "I've got a sworn statement from you that this man, Jacques Gelé, is the new head of the Falcone crime family. The witness chuckles "Jacques? He's a fall guy. I'm the brains of the organization." Laughs from the gallery erupts. James turns to the judge.

"Permission to treat the witness as hostile?" He asks as the witness says "Hostile? I'll show you hostile." He jumps up, points a gun at him, and pulls the trigger, with people screaming, and James's friends in the audience yelling denials at this. Much to their collective relief however, the gun jams. James, after quickly recovering from his near-death experience, steps forward and grabs the gun while delivering a right hook. He unloads the gun and sets it down in front of Jacques.

"Ceramic 28 caliber. Made in Vacuo. If you want to kill a public servant, Mr. Jacques, I recommend you buy Valen." Everyone stares, open-mouthed, as James adjusts his tie like a boss. Then the courtroom erupts in celebration as the Bailiffs are wrestling the witness away from the box, while the man in the audience is getting pats on the back for his other handling that, to his embarrassment. He then sees what was happening to the guy that very nearly killed and says "But, your honor, I'm not done..."

We cut to James' office, it was mid-afternoon outside. Ozpin in standing inside as James enters. The two men shake hands. "Well now, word's out you've got a hell of a right hook. Shame he's going to walk." James thanks him for the praise and shacks his head. "Well, one good thing about the mob is they keep giving you second chances."

He then picks up a bundle of lien, the same one from the heist. "Lightly irradiated bills. Fancy stuff for a city cop. Had any help with this?" he asks rhetorically, already knowing the answer.

Oz shrugs and gives a reply, "We liaise with various agen-" "Enough, Ozpin." He interrupts.

"I want to meet him." Oz just smirks a bit at him. "Official policy is to arrest the vigilante known as Batman on sight." James snorts back a laugh and returns the smirk "And that flood light on top of M.C.U.?" He tries to play that off. "If you have any concerns about... malfunctioning equipment... take them up with maintenance, counselor."

James tosses the bills back onto his desk, annoyed at the BS Oz is still trying to sell to him. "I've put every known money launderer in Vale behind bars, but somehow the mob is still getting its money out." He proclaimed, earing a few whistles in respect for his dedication and success in his work. "I think you and your 'friend' have found the last game in town and you're trying to hit 'em where it hurts: their wallets. Bold, I like it. You gonna count me in?"

Oz shakes his head. "In this town, the less that people know, the safer the operation is." Now James is looking a bit frustrated. "Lieutenant, I don't like that you've got your own special unit, and I don't like that it's full of cops I investigated at internal affairs."

Oz sighs in resignation. "If I didn't work with cops you'd investigated, I'd be working alone. I don't get political points for being an idealist, I have to do the best I can with what I have." He looks tired now, showing the audience just how exhausted his job has made him.

James looks at Ozpin, thinking how to go forward. "You want me to back warrants for search and seizure on five banks without telling me who we're after?" He still wants to be of some help, something that Oz appreciates and decides to meet him in the middle, "I can give you the names of the banks."

He nods "Well ok, that's a start. I'll get you your warrants." He raises his arm for a handshake. "But I want your trust in return." Oz goes to shake his hand. "You don't have to sell me, James. We all know you're Vale's white knight." James, finally making some, grins. "Yeah? Well I hear that they've got a different nickname for me down at M.C.U."

Cut to a boardroom inside Schnee Enterprises. Its CEO, Adrian Polendina, and the rest of the board are listening to Arthur Watts, CEO of Watts' Industries.

"In Atlas, Watts' Industries stands for dynamic new growth. A joint venture with Schnee Enterprises will be a powerhouse on the international scene." Watts boasted as Adrian nodded and said "Well, Mr. Watts, I think I speak for the rest of the board, and Mr. Schnee, in expressing our own excitement..." A loud noise suddenly interrupts his speech. Watts looked to the head of the table, only to deadpan at seeing Whitley fast asleep, his loud snoring being the cause of the noise.

In the hallway, Adrian was escorting Watts to the elevator. He's joined by Scarlet David, an ambitious 30-year-old M&A consultant lawyer.

Watts was busy trying to reassure his escort as they neared the elevator, "It's OK, Mr. Polendina. Everyone knows who really runs Schnee Enterprises." He simply smiles and nods to diffuse the situation "We'll be in touch as soon as our people have wrapped up the diligence."

After Watts enters the elevator, and the doors closed, Scarlet frowned and turns to his superior. "Sir, I know Mr. Schnee's curious on how his trust fund gets replenished but frankly... this is embarrassing." Polendina heads for his office, with his subordinate in tow.

"You worry about the diligence, Mr. David. I'll worry about Mr. Schnee." Scarlet sighed and gave his boss a folder. "It's already done. the numbers are solid." Adrian smiled at him "Double check it. We wouldn't want the trust fund to run out, now would we?" Back inside the boardroom, Whitley is seen awake and standing by the window.

His friend walked in and asked while smiling a bit, "Another long night?" Whitley smiles back and turns to him "This joint venture was your idea you know." He reminded his friend and 'boss'.

"The consultants loved it, but I'm not convinced yet. Watts' Industries has been growing steadily for years now with no signs of stopping. They must get some of their money that's off the books."

Whitely nods at his friend's deduction. "OK. Cancel the deal then." Adrian looks pointedly at him, smirking a bit. "You knew." Whitely shrugs it off. "I needed a closer look at their books."


	3. 3

In a restaurant, we see Glynda and James at a table. Uncharacteristically, he looks a bit intimidated by his surroundings, not used to the fancy décor yet. "It took three weeks to get a reservation and I had to tell them I worked for the government." He laments his thoughts to his date. Glynda looks surprised "Really?" "This city health inspector's not afraid to pull strings." James boasted, causing Glynda to smile.

Then, over his shoulder, she sees Whitley enter, accompanied by a beautiful woman. James noticed and asked "What?" Whitley then makes himself known to James, in typical fashion "Glynda! Fancy that." She did not look amused, and her tone reflected that, "Yes, Whitley. Fancy that."

Whitley, either not noticing the tone or flat out ignored it, introduced his date. "Glynda, Natascha. Natascha, Glynda." Natascha, in an odd accent (AN. Don't know what Russian is called in Remnant), greeted the couple with a polite hello. "Ah. The famous Whitley Schnee." James greeted. "Glynda's told me everything about you." In a joking manner Whitley replied, "Well, I certainly hope not".

Glynda, seeing that he would not be leaving decided to introduce her date. "Whitley, this is James Ironwood." Whitley, after saying hello, got a 'brilliant idea' and said, "Let's put a couple tables together." James, rightfully confused with the notion, said "I don't know if they'll let-" he was sadly interrupted though.

"They should! I own the place." Whitley replied boldly.

Having a key sense for what games her 'friend' was playing at, Glynda asked with more than a hint of suspicion, "For how long? About three weeks?" Whitley took it with grace however. "How'd you know?" She then turned to his date, immediately recognizing her, "Natascha, aren't you...?" "Prima ballerina for the Moscow Ballet." Whitley proudly proclaimed. She looked at his friend with even more suspicion, and a bit of disgust thrown in, "James is taking me there next week."

"You're into ballet, James?" Whitley was trying to passively interrogate the man, causing a few in the audience to glare at him for the attempt. Glynda though was quick to derail that. "No. He knows that I am though. (whispering) Not that you would know."

A few of the staff finally arrives with an extra table.

The scene transitions to them finishing up their dinner and Natascha talking about the topic of family. "Oh, come on! How could you want to raise children in a city like this?"

Whitley tries to defend his home, "I was raised here. I turned out OK." James, though, asked confusingly, "Wait, isn't Schnee Manor in the city limits?" Both Glynda's snorted, trying to cover up their laughs. Whitley though took the untended joke in stride. "The Bulwark? Sure. You know, as our new D.A. you might want to figure out where your jurisdiction ends."

Natascha steered the conversation back to the original topic. "I'm talking about the kind of city that idolizes a masked vigilante..." James tried to downplay the clear breaking of the law. "Vale's proud of an ordinary man standing up for what's right." Natascha quickly shook her head and denied his claim. "Vale needs heroes like you- elected officials, not a man who thinks he's above the law."

Whitley 'agreed' as well, "Exactly. Who appointed the Batman?" James frowned. "We did. All of us who stood by and let scum take control of our city." He was clearly upset by that, and Whitley sees the passion behind his words.

Natascha looks afraid "But this is a democracy, James." He looked back with conviction. "When their enemies were at the gate, the Romans would suspend democracy and appoint one man to protect the city. It wasn't considered an honor. It was considered public service."

Glynda curbed his speech a bit. "Yeah, and the last man they asked to protect the republic was named Caesar, and he never gave up that power." James shrugged. "Well, I guess you either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain. Look, whoever the Batman is, he doesn't want to spend the rest of his life doing this. How could he? Batman is looking for someone to take up his mantle."

Now Natascha was amused and smiled, "Someone like you, Mr. Ironwood?" showing that she was a bit smitten with his emboldened speech, causing a few in the audience to laughs at the on-screen Glynda glaring at her. He shrugged again, "Maybe. If I'm up to it." Natascha reaches up and covers the top half of James's face. "But what if James is the Batman?" He snickered a bit at that, "If I was sneaking out every night, someone would've noticed by now." He takes Glynda's hand at the extra meaning behind the word. Glynda glances at Whitley awkwardly.

Said man nodded and pointed at him. "Well, you've sold me, James. I'm gonna throw you a fundraiser." Said man was confused at the pitch coming from left field, as were a few in the audience. "That's nice of you, Whitley, but I'm not up for reelection for three years. That won't even begin for-"

Whitley, however, interrupted him. "I don't think you understand. One fundraiser with my pals, you'll never need another lien." James smiles at the opportunity.

The scene cuts to the next day, with a line of high-quality cars parking at the back alley of a hotel. As they stop, they dispense well-dressed gangsters who immediately head for the backdoor.

Inside the kitchen, Roman walks through a metal detector manned by two Atlesians. There he sees a tall man wearing a black vest over a white dress shirt, a red tie, black gloves, red tinted glasses and black dress pants is seen being wanded. This is Hei Xiong, or more commonly known as Junior. His bodyguards, including the Malachite twins, standing near.

He nods at Roman, wary of the tight level of security. We then cut to a conference room, where Vale's most notorious crime bosses are meeting. A door opens, and two burly Atlesians enter, pushing a cart with a TV on top.

They place it at the end of the table. One of the crime bosses, one Raven Branwen, looks on in confusion and anger. "The hell is this...?" The screen flickers to life, showing the face of Watts. The room erupts in shouts and accussations.

Through the tv, Watts said "Ladies andGentlemen, please. As you're all aware, one of our deposits was stolen. A relatively small amount: 68 million."

Roman looked around at his fellow associates with a critical eye. "Who's stupid enough to steal from us?" Neo was glaring at the people with distrust, the one off-screen clapping happily at seeing her counterpart. Watts replied, "I'm told the man who arranged the heist calls himself The Joker." Now the fashionable thief looked confused "Who the hell is that?"

The one who answered his question is Jacques. "Some destitute, deranged mad-man who wears a cheap purple suit and horrid make-up. He's not a problem- he's nothing." He insulted, making Jaune's friends glare at him.

He looks at Watts "The problem is our money being tracked by the cops." Murmurs of surprise sprouted from the group. Watts nodded. "Thanks to Mr. Gelé's well-placed sources we know that the police have identified our banks using marked bills and are planning to seize your funds. Today as a matter of fact." Everyone starts shouting at the potential loss.

In various banks, we see police vans parked nearby. In one SWAT van, Ozpin is seen sitting just outside a bank. His trusted lieutenant Oobleck is outside another. Blake a third. Ozpin contacts his men "SWAT teams, check weapons and prepare to move..."

Back in the peanut gallery, Watts was waiting for everyone to calm down.

Roman was pissed. "You promised us clean money to use!" Watts was smug in his reply. "With the investigation ongoing, none of you can risk hanging on to your own proceeds. And since the enthusiastic new D.A. has put all my competitors out of business, I'm your only option." Jacques was turning a rather unhealthy shade of red but managed to barely keep his anger in check. "So, what are you proposing?" he asked through gritted teeth. Watts turned to the man, "Moving all deposits to one secure location. Not a bank however." Junior glared at the man on screen. "Where, then?" The twins crossing their arms simultaneously and glaring at the prick. "Obviously, no one can know but myself. If the police were to gain leverage over one of you, then everyone's money would be at stake."

Jacques asks Watts. "How soon can you move the money?" Cut back to the banks, we see Ozpin hurries up a flight of stairs with several of his men. SWAT teams rush the various banks. "I already have..."

In an underpass, a man is finishing loading a trailer filled with cash. The truck pulls out into a convoy of similar sized trucks. Inside a bank vault, Ozpin stands in an almost empty vault, furious. So mad, that he kicks a wad of lien, the same ones that were marked by the police.

Watts continues "For obvious reasons I couldn't wait for your permission..." The shot of Watts on the main screen widens "... Rest assured, your money is safe." He is already on his private jet.

Roman, both, did not look so happy with his decision. "So, what's stopping them from getting to you?" some of the bosses nodded in agreement, with the good adults in the audience voicing their own agreements. "As the money is moved, I am on my way to Atlas. Far from James's jurisdiction. And the Atlesian government will not extradite one of their own."

From the back of the room, someone is slowly laughing. It grows and grows, until it fills the room. All eyes turn to a figure that many in the audience were hoping to forget: The Joker. Sweaty clown makeup obscuring the horrible scars that contorts his mouth into a permanent, psychotic smile.

"And I thought my jokes were bad." Junior was the first to react, and essentially gave one of his men his death certificate. "Give me one good reason why I shouldn't have my boy here pull your cheap head off."

The Joker in response, pulls out a freshly sharpened pencil. "How about a magic trick?" He then slams the pencil into the table, pointing the sharp end up. "I'm gonna make this pencil disappear." His arms gestures to the pencil with 'magic hands'. Junior nods at his guy.

The dead-man-walking steps forwards to grab The Joker, who quickly sidesteps and, as he grips his head, slams it face down onto the table. The body instantly goes limp and slides off the table, the pencil disappearing inside his left eye socket. "TADDA! It's, ah it's gone." The Joker moves to sit down on a vacant chair, while grinning at his audience.

The Jocker continued after getting himself comfortable. "And by the way, Jacques, this suit wasn't cheap. You should know, you payed for it." Junior stands up, furious at how their money was being spent.

Roman stops him. "Sit down you idiot. I want to hear what he has to say." The Joker nods his thanks and straightens his posture. "Okay. So, let's rewind the clock back about a year. These cops and lawyers wouldn't dare cross any of you." He looks surprised at them "So what the fuck happened? Did your balls drop off or something? You see, a guy like me-" "A freak" Junior interrupts and some of the others laugh.

The Joker pauses for a moment, then continues while trying to ignore the interruption. "A guy, like me- look, I know why you're hold your little *cough* group therapy session in broad daylight. I know why you're afraid to go out at night. The Batman." The mob bosses look uncomfortable at the mention of His name, showing how it affected them all.

"You see, look at yourselves. He's shown Vale your true colors. And James... He's just the beginning." He points at Watts, "And as for the tv's so-called, 'plan'? Batman has no jurisdiction. He'll find him and make him squeal" here the screen is directed at his face as he reaches his arms out and squeezes his hands like he was choking someone. He then smiles at Watts, the one in the audience. "I can tell who's the squealers... Every. Single. Time."

Roman, ignoring the man's weird behavior and Watts 'mysteriously' losing connection, asks "Well what do you propose?" The Joker answers with "It's simple. Uh, we Kill the Batman." Much to the amusement of many of the crooks. Jacques is heard over the noise "If it's so easy why haven't you done it already?"

The Joker quickly points to him and says, "Like my mother always told me- if you're good at something, never do it for free."

Roman looks intrigued "How much do you want?" "...Half." The Joker tells his price. Again, to the laughter of those in the room, as well as the thieves off-screen holding their chests as they were having trouble breathing, from the ludicrous amount.

The Joker shrugs and simply waits for the laughter to die down. "If we don't deal with this, now, soon *snaps fingers* uh Junior won't even be able to get a nickel for his grandma."

Junior smashes his fists on the table and stands up, temper finally getting the best of him. "Enough, from the clown!" He moves to kill The Joker, who quickly gets up and casually opens his nice coat, revealing grenades strapped to his chest, much to the audience's collective shock. Junior stops, and the other crooks move back as quickly as possible to get away from the blast radius. "Now, now, let's not blow this out of all proportion."

It also seems that the pins are tied to his thumb, which is made more apparent when he starts tugging at them tauntingly at the man. Junior stares at the Joker while breathing hard. "You think you can steal from us and just walk away?" The Joker nods while smirking a bit. "Oh yeah."

"I'm putting the word out- 5 hundred grand for this clown dead. A million alive, so I get to teach him some manners, first."

The Joker stares for a bit, then turns to the rest of the assembly. "Ok, so let me know when guys want to take this a little more seriously." He reaches into one of his pockets and pulls out a joker card "Here's my card", and places it down on the table. The Joker then strolls out, just like he told them he would.


	4. 4

Open up to the night sky, The Bat Signal shown prominently. It then cuts to the roof of the police station with Batman emerging from the shadows towards the spotlight, confused as to why he's been summoned. The man next to the glowing spotlight turns, revealing him to be James. "You're a hard man to reach you know." Ozpin then bursts through the door, pistol drawn. He sees that James was the one who turned on the signal and lowers his weapon.

James continues, not bothered with the extra person and anger clear in his voice. "Watts is halfway to Atlas, just so you know. I could have taken his passport. I told you to keep me in the loop! None of this would've happened if you did!"

Oz was quick to defend himself, "Really? When we stormed the vaults, all that was left were the marked bills- the ones we used for our operation." He then shouts "They knew we were coming! As soon as your office got involved, there's a leak-"

James interrupted, "My office?! You're sitting down here with scum like Taurus and Belladonna..."

"Oh, yeah, Ozpin- I almost had your rookie cold on a racketeering beef." He continues to berate Oz as he shouts back. "Don't try to cloud the fact that clearly Gelé's got people in your office, James!" James then turns to Batman. "We need Watts back, but Atlas won't extradite such a renowned citizen under any circumstances."

Batman thinks hard about his options, then he says, "If I get him to you, can you get him to talk?" James nods, "Oh, I'll get him to sing." Oz cuts in, making the two turn their gazes to him. "We're going after the mob's life savings. Things will get ugly." James waves off the warning, "I knew the risks when I took this job, lieutenant. Same as you." Before turning to Batman as he says. "How will you get him back, any...way?" He turns but Batman is gone. James looks around the roof, startled that he left without a sound. Ozpin smirks at his effort. "Yeah, he tends to do that."

The screen turns to the Schnee Enterprises in the middle of the day before cutting to the inside of a big office with Whitley sitting down in front of Adrian, showing that the office is his. Adrian gets up from behind his desk. "Our Atlassian friend left town before I could tell him the deal is off, shame too. I was looking forwards to that."

Whitley smirks, "I'm sure you've always wanted to go to Atlas." Adrian opens the door to a private elevator, then the two stepped in. "Not really, can't stand the cold I'm afraid." Adrian smiles as he presses a button. "What's so wrong with a phone call anyway?"

He shrugs as he snickered at the banter "Oh I think Mr. Watts deserves a more personal touch after arriving so far from home to have a meeting here. Wouldn't you agree?" The elevator stops, and the doors open to an expansive room, the Applied Sciences Division.

Adrian leads his friend off the elevator and into the vast space. He then leads him to a section as he explains what he may need. "For high altitude jumps, you'll need an oxygen tank and some stabilizers. I must say though, compared to what you normally request, jumping out of an airplane is pretty tame."

He then stops at a cabinet, pulling open a drawer and hauls out an oxygen tank and ribbed rubber hosing. Whitley sees what is presented, but he's curious about something. "So how about getting back inside the plane?" He didn't want to jump out of a plane into potentially hostile territory without any way for him to escape safely.

Adrian just smirks, "I can look into getting a good travel agent for you." He rolls his eyes good-naturedly, "Without it landing, Adrian." He nods in approval. "Now that's more like it, Mr. Schnee." He quickly shuts the drawer and moves on, thinking on what they've got stored away in here that may have what he wants. Then he shakes his head and sighs.

"I don't think I have anything here. Beacon had a program in the '60s for getting their people out of hot spots. They called it 'Sky Hook'. Now-" Adrian opens another cabinet to reveal components for his new bat-suit: armored plating secured with a mesh underneath. Whitley lifts an arm.

Adrian begins to explain. "Hardened Kevlar plates on a titanium- dipped, fiber tri-weave for flexibility..." Whitley examines something on the gauntlet he's holding, seeing blades pop out as he presses down on something... "You'll be lighter, faster, more agile..." Whitley flinches as the blades fire off, spinning like shurikens and just barely missing his right ear, and embedding themselves in a filing cabinet opposite from where they're standing.

Adrian looks at him, eyebrow raised but not unhappily. "Perhaps you should read the instructions, first." He says with a bit of sass present in his voice. Properly chastised, Whitley smiles weakly and says "Sorry."

Adrian then picks up the chest piece, demonstrating its flexibility. "Now unfortunately, there is a trade-off. The spreading of the plates gives you more weak spots. You'll be more vulnerable to gunfire and knives compared to your previous suit." He just takes it in stride, knowing that to be more agile, protection would need to be diminished. "Well, we wouldn't want things getting too easy, now would we?"

Whitley picks up the suit and thinks to his past interactions with the criminal underbelly, remembering a specific detail. "How will it hold up against dogs?" Adrian looks at him quizzically. "Dogs, Mr. Schnee? We're talking chihuahuas or rottweilers here?" Whitley smiles at the quip as Adrian shrugs. "It should do fine against cats."

We are back to the bat-bunker, a couple hours later with Whitley examining a parachute harness. Klein is nearby as he unfolds a diagram of a large pane with a giant "P" mounted on the front on top of a table. "I found one sir. In Patch. Very nice man. Says it will take him a week to get it in working order, unfortunately. Good news though, he takes cash. What about a flight crew?" Whitley calls back, still examining his equipment and wondering how to best place it on his suit. "North Vacuo smugglers. They run flights into Mantle, below radar the whole way. Did you think of an alibi?"

Klein looks up, quite pleased with himself. "Oh, yes." He grins.

We cut to the outside entrance to a concert hall at night, where Glynda and James arrive in fine clothing to find the box office closed. A sign reading 'PERFORMANCE CANCELED' posted on the widow.

A newspaper story is also taped to the glass. Over a picture of Whitley Schnee on a yacht reading: Love Boat - Billionaire absconds with entire Moscow ballet. James wasbaffled by it while Glynda was shaking in rage.

It's now day, where on the deck of Whitley's yacht Klein is picking his way over twelve sunbathing ballerinas. Whitley looks up from a newspaper nearby. Klein goes up to him and points to a plane landing gently across the bay.

"I believe your plane is here." He talks loudly so that he's hear over the noise. As the Bullhead cuts the engines, causing the craft to drop and make a decent splash, Whitley says "You okay Klein, you look tired. Will you be all right without me?"

A Ballerina suddenly rolls over and waves the suntan lotion at Klein. He looks glances to the woman, then turns back to his boss, smiling like a loon as he did, "Oh don't you worry sir. I'll be just fine here."

Whitley shrugs and turns away, not wanting to see the weird smile on his butler's face anymore, and tosses a large, waterproof kit bag into the water and jumps in after it. He breaches the surface and begins swimming over to the sea-plane.

We now cut to the inside of a pool hall in the middle of the night. Here Junior in playing pool by himself, the twins behind him standing guard by the door. One of his men then steps inside the room. "Boss," he said, causing him to stop his game "somebody's here for you." Junior looks to the back as three people walk inside. Two of which are very familiar to certain members of the audience.

That right. Walking in and looking around the hideout of one of Vale's crime bosses are Sun, Neptune, and their fourth and last teammate Sage Ayana. Their shock goes even higher by what the goon says next. "They say they've just killed the Joker and they've come to collect the reward."

Junior was skeptical about the whole thing. "They bring any proof?" His employee smirks as he nods. "They say they've brought in the body." As he says this, he waves to two new goons. Both are carrying something wrapped in several garbage bags and they place it on top of the pool table. The three members of Team SSSN are meanwhile standing in the corner.

Junior pulls back one of the garbage bags, and reveals the Joker's face, much to the students' horror and the villains' disappointment. He smirks and turns to address the bounty hunters. "So, Dead. That's five hundred-"

As he calls out the reward, behind him the Joker sits up, and thrusts his two hidden knives into the chests of the goons that carried him, leaving them embedded in their new sheaths. Junior quickly spins around to see the crazy grin of a very much alive Joker as his head was grabbed and another knife shoved in his mouth.

The Joker smiles, "How about alive?" he says as he jams the blade in Junior's mouth, pressing the metal right against his cheek. The Bounty Hunters meanwhile show their true loyalties as they subdue the twins and remaining guard, making them kneel as they point guns to their heads.

The Joker leaned closer to Junior's face and softly asked "Do you want to know how I got these scars?" The screen's surface started to shift, like the surface of water before stabilizing into a black-and-white image of someone walking down the street.

It shifts closer to the man, his stumble indicating that he's had more than a few too many drinks, as the Joker's is heard, "My father... was a drinker. And a fiend." The man walked under a streetlamp and reveals the form of Tyrian Callows.

"And then one night... he goes off crazier than usual..." It now shows the inside of a kitchen where to the surprise of her friends, an older Yang Xiao Long was there, looking at her husband in fear as he was going crazy, wreaking anything that he got his hands on. "Mommy gets the kitchen knife to defend herself. He doesn't like that. Not. One. Bit." Yang, in a fit of courage, went and grabbed a large kitchen knife, pointing its edge at him so that he wouldn't come any closer as Tyrian glares at her, snarling like an animal.

Meanwhile, near the doorframe, a younger Jaune Arc was there, watching the whole thing.

The Joker tugs Junior's cheek with the blade as he continued with his horror story. "So, me watching, he takes the knife to her, laughing while he does it." Tyrian manages to overpower Yang, who only managed to slice his arm as he grabbed her. He then took the knife and plunged it into her stomach, laughing like a hyena.

Then, after the body dropped, he turned to see his son with a look of horror on his young face. "Turns to me and says, 'why so serious?'" Tyrian said what Joker was telling them. He then walks slowly to the young boy, knife with the blood of his deceased wife clutched in his hand much to the adults' wide-eyed terror.

"He comes at me with the knife- 'why so serious?'" Jaune is still standing there, too petrified to move. His mind couldn't cope with the scene he had just witnessed, only flinching as what his dad repeated to say.

Tyrian then kneels in front of his boy, grabs his arm with his free hand so that he couldn't escape, and smiles insanely wide as he puts the blade in his trembling mouth. "He sticks the blade in my mouth- 'Let's put a smile on that face'"

Changes back to the present....

"and..." The Joker looks up at the paled faces of the captured goons. He then looks directly at the camera and smiles. "Why so serious?" The Joker flicks his wrist, and the body guards flinch as Junior falls, dead.

The Joker turns to the guards, ripping the last of the trash bags from his person, and without a care of how his story affected everyone says, "Now, our organization is small, but we've got a lot of potential for aggressive expansion..." He grabs a pool cue, the same one that Junior used to play funny enough., "so which of you fine ladies and gentlemen would like to join our team?"

The three all nod in fear.

He then raises a finger to the air, as if remembering something important. "Oh, there's only two slots open right now, so we're going to have to have..." The Joker then snaps the pool cue in half over his knee, causing many to flinch at the sudden noise.

"...try-outs." He looks over the two ends, seeing which is sharper. He then drops the broken part in his left hand in the middle of the three. He then calmly walks away with a parting message "Make it fast."

By a silent command, Sun and the rest pushed the three to a bowed position, making them stare at each other as they left after their boss. The three stares at the jagged pool cue and then the twins look at each other. The sisters take a long look and then turn to the remaining guard.

Cuts to an exterior shot of a Hotel in the higher section of Atlas the following day.

A bullhead then flies over and touches down on one of the hotel's twin landing pads. Two of Watts' VPs approach, as the vehicle powers down. Adrian gets out, and they shake hands. One of the VPs announces, "Welcome to Atlas, Mr. Polendina! Mr. Watts regrets he is unable to meet you in person. But with his current legal difficulties..."

Adrian nods in acceptance, "I understand."

Cut to the lobby of Watts' Industries. The VPs usher Adrian towards a security check area as the second VP says, "I'm afraid for security reasons I have to ask for your scroll."

Adrian simply hands his scroll to the nearby security guard, who puts it in a glass box underneath his station.

It then shows a large dining room overlooking the city, where Adrian and Arthur are seated in a table, eating lunch. Watts, after swallowing his food, takes a moment before saying "I must apologize for leaving Vale in the middle of our negotiations. This misunderstanding with the city's police... I couldn't let such a thing threaten my company (James: "'Misunderstanding' he says"). A businessman of your stature will understand. But with you here, we may continue."

Adrian nods, "Well, it was awfully nice of you to bring me out here in such style, Mr. Watts. Unfortunately, the reason I came here was to-"

Suddenly a ring tone is heard. Adrian pulls out a scroll. He presses the off switch and places it by his plate.

Watts narrowed his eyes, "We do not allow scrolls in-" Adrian interrupts him "My apologies. Forgot that I had it to be honest. Anyway, the reason I've come all this way was to explain why we're going to have to put our deal on hold..."

Watts stares hard at Adrian furiously. Adrian just smiles.

"We can't afford to be seen to do business with... well, whatever it is you're accused of being. A businessman of your stature will understand." Adrian passive-aggressively mocks. Watts silently gets up. As he did, Adrian retrieves his scroll and stands as well.

Watts says, gritting his teeth as he does so, "I think, Mr. Polendina, that a simple call might have sufficed."

"Well, I do love Atlassian cuisine. And Mr. Schnee didn't want you to think we'd been deliberately wasting your time."

"No, just accidently wasting it." Watts grounds out. Adrian laughs, "That's very good- 'accidently'. Very good. I'll be sure and tell Mr. Schnee that he was wrong about you not having a sense of humor."

We cut back to the lobby as Adrian is walking through security again. He nods at the guard as he passes by, who bows in return, offering him back his scroll. He shakes his head and holds up the one he had. The guard, though confused as he was sure that he confiscated that, smiles and nods while putting the scroll back into the tray with several others.

Cuts to the inside of a cargo hauler. Two smugglers kept steal glances at Whitley as they worked, crouched at the rear in a balaclava and flight suit. The copilot, seeing that they were at their destination, signals Whitley who puts on his oxygen mask and stands up. The rear of the plane opens, he steps to the edge, and jumps.

The skies above Atlas shows that it's dawn out. Moving across the frozen tundra towards the lower levels of the city a tiny figure drops into frame, plummeting towards the snow-covered outskirts.

Seconds from impact, Whitley pulls the chute, and lands safely on the snow.

It cuts to the city beneath a freeway, Whitley is walking down the sidewalk as he goes inside the entrance of one of the nearby skyscrapers.

It then shows him stepping inside a somewhat crowded elevator. As it takes him to his floor, he takes out a disposable camera. Once the elevator stops, he steps out to a beautiful view of the city below. He takes his camera and lines up a shot like any of the tourist next to him.

Adrian's voice could be heard. "There's a better view from the peak tram." Whitley turns to find Adrian standing there, a street map in his hands.

He smiles, "How's the view from Watts' Industries?"

Adrian sighs in response. "Restricted. Watts' holed up in there good and tight. Here..." He shows Whitley his scroll. The screen displays a 3-d map of Watts' office suite.

Whitley takes the phone, impressed by his friend's work. "What's this?" Adrian says, "I had R&D work on it. It sends out high frequencies and records the response time to map an environment." He smiles.

He nods. "Sonar. Just like a b-" "Submarine. Like a submarine." Adrian interrupts, already knowing where his mind would reach. He nods again, "And the other device?"

Adrian discretely points to a large building, 'Watts' Industries' sign on the front. "In place."

Whitley nods, moving away. "Mr. Schnee?" he stops and turns back. "Good luck." He nods and walks away.

We cut to an exterior shot of Atlas at night. The view moves towards the tallest building in the glittering skyline. Whitley is there, crouched next to the pointed roof. The blades of his gauntlets then click into place, and he puts on his helmet-like cowl, his cape replaced with a pack for some reason. He stands up, pulling two black boxes from his belt. He clicks the two together and unfolds them into a rifle-like device.

Now as Batman, he places the device close to his face, eyes looking down the built-in scope. He pauses for a bit, looking at a second, lower building. He adjusts the setting and fires four times. Four small sticky bombs silently slap onto the glass of the second building.

The audience can clearly see that they have visible timers which are counting down.

We cut back to the now closed lobby of Watts' Industries, where Adrian's scroll glows in the box under the security guard's desk, characters racing across the screen. Suddenly the monitor on top of the desk flickers off, the lights dim down, and all the security doors in the front of the building open at once.

The guard sees this and grabs his radio, calling for help...

Back to the rooftop, Batman launches into the glittering night, dropping from the tall tower. His pack then bursts open, becoming his bat wings. He uses them to glide down to the lower building, streaks around it a few times to get the proper height, banking hard to line up the shot...

Back to Watts' office the man is talking on his scroll, staring at a profit projection on a nearby monitor, when suddenly the room goes dark.

Back outside, as Batman hurtles towards the glass he collapses his wings, wrapping his cape around himself at the last moment and bursts through the glass! Rolling across the floor in a flurry of broken glass...

In his office, Watts pulls out a pistol and steps into the hallway. His bodyguard are waiting for him, carrying flashlights.

He looks to his men, "Where the hell are the cops?" One answers with "They will arrive momentarily, Sir." He groans "What the hell am I paying them for?" They all then head for the stairwell.

Outside the building, a small army of Atlas police, lead by a detective, are moving onto the building.

Back in the hallway, Watts and his men make their way out onto the mezzanine. Across the room, something makes a crashing noise. His men fan out, trying to cover the room with their flashlights. Suddenly, one of the flashlights goes dark. Then another. Someone screams.

Watts fires once, then twice. The muzzle flash from his weapon lighting up the room for split second.

Outside the cops are swarming into the building. Security from the lobby directs the detective on where to go...

Back inside his office, Watts locks the door and reloads his gun. The door is kicked open and he fires again. No one is there. He stares at the empty frame, finger restless on the trigger. From his right- a noise. He turns and fires at the sound. In the muzzle flash, Batman bears down on him like a demon. He manages to fire several more times before Batman tackles him down.

Batman pulls out a small pack and straps it onto Watts. As he does this, the screen look to the sticky bombs for a split second, the counter hitting 0. The detective and the cops finally arrive and bursts into the room. They see Batman and raised their weapons, but he simply uses Watts as a human shield. "Let him go and put hands on your head!" He orders him.

As they stand there, the wall and ceiling behind Batman and Watts explodes, revealing the dawn sky above Atlas. The cops were stunned for a bit, not expecting that, and looked around as he hears a low rumble...

Batman jerks the ripcord on Watts' pack. The cops cower as a weather balloon pops out of the pack, unreeling high-test nylon as it floats up into the air. The cops cock their weapons, and Watts looks up, bemused. The weather balloon is now about two hundred feet up, swaying gently. The rumble builds...

Suddenly, a massive cargo plane roars over with a large 'P' on the side. The front of the plane snags the line, and suddenly Watts and Batman are yanked through the hole.

Lau screams like little girl as he and Batman soars up into the sky. The detective runs to the edge and looks up. Batman and Watts are gone.

We cut to Ozpin's office back in Vale the following morning as the man is looking through case files. Blake bursts in. "Uh Oz, you're gonna want to see this."

Outside the building, Ozpin follows Blake through a crowd of excited cops. On the ground, leaning on one of the support pillars, is Watts. A sign is taped to his chest: 'I need a home please.'

It then cuts to the inside of an interrogation room where Watts is sitting next to his sleazy lawyer. Glynda then walks in.

"Alright, just give us the money and we'll cut a deal." Watts just smirks, "The money is the only reason I'm still alive."

She leans forward, speaking softly but clearly, reminding everyone of their own Goodwitch. "You mean when they hear that you've helped us they're going to kill you?" His lawyer immediately tries to bait her. "Are you threatening my client?" She shakes her head "No, I'm just assuming your client's cooperation with this investigation. As will everyone" she hinted at the end.

She then moves to the door while passing a remark. "Enjoy your stay in County, Mr. Watts."

Watts suddenly says "Wait."

Glynda stops. "I won't give you the money, but I'll give you my clients. All of them."

She turns around with a smirk and her arms extended. "You were a glorified accountant. What could you have on all of them that we could charge?"

Watts smirked in pride. "I'm good with calculations. I handled all their investments. It's all in one big pot."

In the observation room right next to them, James hits a buzzer. He then turns to Ozpin. "I've got it. RICO. If their money was pooled, we can charge all of them as one big criminal conspiracy." Ozpin looks at him intrigued.

"Charge them with what?"

Glynda enters from the side-door as James explains. "In a RICO case if we can charge any of the conspirators with a felony-" "We can charge all of them with it." She interrupts, having the same idea.

James nods at Glynda, excited.

Back in the interrogation room, Glynda comes back in. "Mr. Watts, do you have details of this communal fund? Ledgers, notebooks...?"

He just smiles. "In exchange for immunity, protection and a chartered Bullhead back to Atlas."

She nods. "Once you've testified in open court. So, with your clients locked up, what going to happen with all that money?" Watts smiled broadly "Like I said- I'm good with calculations."

Back in the observation room, James and Ozpin watched the interaction. "He can't go to County. I'll keep him here in the holding cells." Ozpin said.

James looks back, "What is this Ozpin, your fortress now?" Ozpin looks at him in exasperation. "You trust them over at County?" He immediately counters, "I don't trust them here."

"Watts stays." He strongly proclaimed. James sighs, but nods in acceptance. "It's your call, Lieutenant. Pray that your right."

He nods. "I am, counselor."

Later that day a press release was announced. James is seen, standing in front of a small crowd of reporters. One reporter claims "The Atlassian government claim their international rights have been broken."

James smiles and shrugs. "I don't know about Mr. Watts' travel arrangements..."

We cut to the inside of a restaurant as the conference continues. James's press conference plays on a TV in the corner where the man grins at the camera, "...but I'm sure glad he's back."

Jacques and Roman are watching the TV, pissed beyond belief over the betrayal.

Jacques looks at the screen. "I put the word out. We hire the Joker." He looks to the side, "He was right. We must fix this real problem, and fast." Roman says nothing, going back to his food, but silently agreeing with him. He shakes his head and Spots Ozpin walking over dangling a pair of handcuffs.

Oz nods at the TV. "Our boy looks good on the tube."

Jacques just smiles dismissively at him. "You sure you want to embarrass me in front of my friends, Lieutenant?" Oz just smirks and shakes his head as several officers come inside the restaurant "Oh Don't you worry... they're coming, too." The cops then arrest the criminals there, with Roman still trying to finish his lunch.

It cuts to various locations in the city, where police cruisers are stopping near every neighborhood. Then it shows cops loading various criminals inside.

Inside a Vale courtroom the judge, a Winter Frost, is seen reading the list of charges from her stack of papers.

"...849 counts: racketeering, 246 counts: fraud, 87 counts: conspiracy of murder..." As she lists them off, she is placing the already read papers into a pile but stops when she sees something. Winter turns a page and sees a playing card innocently sitting there. It was a Joker card.

She glances at it, curious, and puts it to a side to continue with her case. "...how do the defendants plead?"

An army of defense lawyers were seen, all yelling at once that their clients were innocent. She turns to the stenographer as she looks back, not knowing what to write despite her remarkable skills.

We cut to City Hall, where we are inside the Mayor's office. Here we see Port, Commissioner Weiss Frost, and Ozpin look up as James enters.

Port was frowning at his new guest. "JAMES! What was that circus?!" James shrugs at the tone of voice his boss took. "I asked Ozpin to make some arrests." Weiss looks at the report in her hands, "Five hundred and..."

"Forty-nine, ma'am." Ozpin supplied her with the rest. Turns to nod at James in approval. James grins back.

Port was speechless. "549 criminals in one day?! How did you convince Winter to hear this farce?"

James smirked. "She shares my enthusiasm for justice. After all, she is a judge." The woman in the audience agreed with that assessment.

Peter started to chuckle at that as he sat down to lean on his chair. "Even if you blow enough smoke to get convictions out of her, you'll set a new record at appeals for quickest kick in the ass."

James shook his head. "It won't matter. The head bosses will make bail, sure... but the mid-level guys. They can't, and they can't afford to be off the streets long enough for trial and appeal. They'll cut deals that include some jail time. Think of all you could do with 18 months of clean streets."

The Mayor waves Ozpin and Weiss out of his office. "The public likes you, James. That's the only reason this might fly." He stands up and goes over to a mini-bar and pours himself a drink. "But that means it's on you. They're all gonna gun after you, now." He looks back to James. "Not just the mob... politicians, journalists, cops- anyone whose wallet's about to get lighter. Are you up to it?" James smiles at the challenge.

He sees it and smiles as he moves to the window overlooking the city. "You better be. They get anything on you... those criminals will be back on the streets..." he turns to look out of the window at a quiet Vale. "Followed swiftly by you and me."

BANG! A dark shape cracks the glass in front of the Port's nose. James rushes to the window and looks out to see what the hell that was...

Outside City Hall, pedestrians look up. One screams, another points up. Five stories up... swinging from a flagpole... is Batman, hanging by his neck dead. His mouth roughly painted in a demonic clown smile.

Moments later, we see that Batman is being lowered from the flagpole by a crane and some rope.

As the body was lowered, the view closes in to something small pinned to his chest by a knife. To their collective horror/intrigue it was another playing card. Another Joker.

If the clown makeup wasn't enough of a hint on who did this, then the Joker card was.

Ozpin moves closer to the body and sees the card. After putting on some spare gloves so as to preserve any evidence, he carefully takes the knife out and takes the card to inspect it. He flips it over and sees a message on the that side. The writing said 'WILL THE REAL BATMAN PLEASE STAND UP?'

We now cut back inside Whitley's penthouse an hour or so later, where the man comes into the living room, excitement in his movements. Nearby Klein is supervising the party arrangements for James' fundraiser.

He goes to his friend and asks "How's it coming along Klein?"

"I think your fundraiser will be a great success, sir." The butler responds in pride.

He straightens his suit as he asks his next question. "And why do you think I wanted to hold a party for Mr. Ironwood?"

Klein smiled at him as he shrugged, "I just assumed it was your usual reason for socializing beyond myself and the scum of Vale's underbelly: to try and impress Miss Goodwitch."

Whitley shook his head and looked at him, with a small blush no less, as he said, "Very droll my friend. But very wrong. Actually, it's James. You see..." Whitley trails off on what he was going to say as he spots something on the television behind him. It shows the Batman hanging from a post, framed by a title in bottom of the screen that reads 'Batman Dead?'.

The image cuts to Lisa in the studio. "...Police released a video footage that was found concealed inside the suit. Viewers be advised: the footage is disturbing."

The image within the TV cuts to a man in one of the makeshift Batman costumes. He was in some kind of bright, fluorescent-lit meat locker if the giant slab of beef was any indication.

Some in the audience gasped at the scene, wondering if the man tied up was the same one that was hanged. They then heard a dreadfully familiar voice of screen.

"Now please, tell them your name." The Joker said. The man weakly responds with "My name, is Leonardo Lionheart..."

"Are you the real Batman?" he asked as the camera readjusts its image a bit, some low squeaky noises emanating from the video. Leonardo says "...No."

"No?" "No." "No?" He laughs a bit at his response as he takes his mask off, showing his sweating face and damp hair. "Then why do you dress up like him?!" He then shows to the camera the mask, shaking it up and down like a piñata while giggling.

In a fit of courage, he said "He's a symbol... A symbol that we don't have to be afraid of scum like you. . . " as it momentarily cuts to Whitley and Klein looking intently at the TV.

Cutting back to the footage, it shows Joker cupping his cheek, Leonardo whimpering. "Yeah~. But you do, Leo. You really do! Huh? Yeah..." As his whimpers grow in volume, Joker gently strokes his cheek with the back of his gloved hand, shushing him like a parent does a child whenever their scared.

The Joker then slaps both his cheeks as he asks, "So, you think the Batman's helped Vale become a safer place?" The man is too petrified to respond and just looks away.

"Look at me." He doesn't, and that just pisses him off "LOOK AT ME!"

Leonardo finally looks up, still afraid. The camera then swings into the face of the Joker, showing his face in chalk-white makeup and red lipstick smeared over his scars. "You see, this is how crazy Batman's made Vale! You want order in this town? Batman must take off his mask...and turn himself in." Here he leans into the camera. "Oh yeah, and every day he doesn't, people will die... starting tonight."

As he says this last bit, he again looks to the audience. "I'm a man of my word~. HAHAHAHAHA!" The image then becomes blurry, the sounds of Leonardo and the demented laughter of the Joker the last things heard before the image cuts to static.


	5. 5

Opens up to a warehouse, where several people are working inside with various chemicals. The guards keeping guards are all wearing Joker masks.

It then shows the Joker leisurely taking a stroll to the goon he put in charge here. "Oh Sage, just the man I wanted to see~." The man turned around, in his hands is a small bottled container holding a sort of green liquid.

"Hey boss." He smiled maliciously at his leader.

"Sooo..." The Joker began, "is the project finished yet?" He frowned when his underling sighed and sadly shook his head.

"I'm sorry boss, the stuff is taking a lot of time to process. What I'm holding?" He raises his hand with the container, "is all we managed to make."

Joker narrowed his eye, "Sage. It's been 4 days, and you have a whole warehouse of hired help, how can that be it?"

"I'm sorry boss," he tries to defend himself. "It's just that the ingredients are rare, and even with Junior's connections, we just can't get to them fast enough."

The Joker closes his eyes and sighs. He then reaches into his pockets, much to the fear of Sage and the heroes, and says "Oh well." He shrugs, much to the people's shock at his nonchalance, "I knew that it would take a long time. Besides," he takes the container out of his man's hands, "this much will do nicely."

The scene changes to the packed inside of Schnee's penthouse, much to the relief of many, in the evening. There they see James and Glynda getting off the elevator. He stands in awe of the penthouse and all its guests.

Glynda looks to her date, smirking at his expression, and says "Now I've seen it all: James Ironwood, scourge of Vale's underworld, scared stiff by the trust fund brigade." She smiled at her teasing.

Glynda then spots someone and darts off, James desperately calling out to her so that he wouldn't be alone. "Glynda-"

Just then Klein's voice was heard, "A little liquid courage, Mr. Ironwood?" James turns to see Klein with drinks on a silver tray. James graciously takes a glass. "Thanks. Klein, right?"

Klein nods while smiling, "Indeed, good sir."

"Ah, Glynda talks about you all the time. You've known her, her whole life?"

"Not yet, sir." James smiled and warily surveys the crowd for something. "Any psychotic ex-boyfriends I should be aware of?"

Klein's response got a few smiles from the audience. "Oh, you have no idea."

He then leaves to serve other guests. James was standing there, puzzled and a bit afraid if he was being honest.

Just then a loud roar is heard, drowning out any conversation. The crowd reacts to it as James looks outside to see...

Cut to just outside the penthouse, where everyone sees a custom-built bullhead touching down, the snowflake design stamped on its side showing just who it belonged to. The man himself spills out with a clutch of supermodels to his sides...

As they enter the penthouse from the helipad elevator, Whitley says boisterously "Sorry, I'm late- glad you started without me! Now, where's Glynda?!"

Both Glynda's cringe at her name being called out. She tries to hide but Whitley spots her. "Oh, there she is. Everyone, Glynda Goodwitch. My oldest friend. When she told me that she was dating James Ironwood, the first thing I said to her was '...the guy from those Oum-awful campaign commercials?'"

Laughter erupts as James shifts a bit, blushing in embarrassment.

Whitley just continues with "'I Believe in James Ironwood.' Nice slogan, James. Definitely caught Glynda's attention."

"But then I started paying attention to James, and all that he's been doing as our new DA, and you know what? I too believe in him. By his watch, Vale can feel a little safer. A bit more optimistic. So, get out your checkbooks and let's make sure that he stays right where all of Vale wants him..." He raises his glass. "Well, all except Vale's criminals of course. To Vale's bright future, James ironwood!" He finished as everyone toasted to the man, applauding the speech.

James smiles, accepting the toast.

We cut to the MCU with Blake catching up to Ozpin, holding paperwork in her hands.

Blake hands over the paperwork. "You know that Joker card that was pinned to the body? Forensics found three sets of DNA."

Ozpin looks over the information, "Any matches?" he asks as he goes over them.

"All three." Was her response. Ozpin stops and turns to face her.

Blake continues with her report, "The DNA belongs to Judge Winter, DA James and Commissioner Weiss."

Ozpin narrowed his eyes. "The Joker's telling us who he's targeting. Get a unit to Winter's house and tell Adam to find James. Get them both into protective custody. Where's the Commissioner?"

Blake says, "Still at City hall."

"Seal the building. No one gets in or out 'till I get there." He orders as he leaves the building.

Cut to an exterior shot of a balcony in the penthouse, Whitley walks out to the edge and looks over Vale. He then hears someone behind him, tuning to look he sees Glynda, glaring at him.

"You know, James may not know you well enough to understand when you're making fun of him. But I do."

Whitley shakes his head. "I meant every word." He then moves closer to Glynda and gently places his hand on her arm.

He continues with "The day you once told me about, the day when Vale no longer needs Batman. It's coming."

Glynda looks at Whitley as he moves closer to her, uncomfortable.

"You can't ask me to wait that long." Glynda shakes her head as she says this, but he doesn't listen. Now taking both arms, he looks at her in excitement. "But it's happening right now. James is that hero. He locked up half the city's criminals, and he did it without wearing a mask. Vale needs a hero with a face."

Just then James' voice is heard off screen. "You sure can throw a party, Whitley, I'll give you that. Thanks again. Mind if I borrow Glynda?"

Glynda glances back at Whitley as she moves to James' side. Whitley watches them expressionless.

We cut to a street at an expensive looking part of the city. There we see two men in suits knocking at a brownstone building. The door opens, revealing Judge Winter. The two men hold up police badges.

Cut to City Hall, Ozpin enters through a tight police presence at the doors. Inside the Police Commissioner's office, Ozpin enters to find Weiss being flanked by armed cops.

Weiss did not look amused by the level of protection around her, and she glared at her lieutenant. "Ozpin, what the hell are you playing at?" She sees Ozpin checking the window. He then turns to address his men. "We're secure here. I want a floor-by-floor search of the entire building done now."

He turns to Weiss. "I'm sorry, ma'am. We may believe that the Joker has made a threat against your life."

She just sighs and goes over to her desk. "Oz, you're unlikely to discover this for yourself, so let me give you some advice: The Police Commissioner gets a LOT of threats" Weiss sits down and pulls out a bottle of whisky and a tumbler from a drawer. She then continues with her 'lesson'. "And I have found the appropriate response to these situations a long time ago..."

We cut back to Winter's home as the second man are waiting by the Judge's car. "Ozpin wants me to go right now? Where am I going anyway?" She asks as she was being calmly escorted.

One of the men nods as he reaffirms his orders. "Yes ma'am. You must understand, these are dangerous people, secrecy is important for your safety. Even we don't know where you're going."

He then hands Winter a sealed envelope. She takes it as the second man opens the car door.

The other officer says "Get in and open the envelope once you're ready to leave. It'll tell you where you're headed." They then head to their own car.

Winter climbs in and watches them drive away. She opens the envelope and pulls out a sheet of paper. Only one word is written in it: 'UP'. Winter looks up.

Winter's car suddenly explodes, heaving the car upwards in a massive fireball.

The car falls back down, and after a moment, burning debris begins to flutter down around the area.

They were Joker cards.

The image cuts to Weiss's office as she pours herself a glass of whisky. As she does this, she says "You're going to have to explain to my husband why I'm late for dinner, lieutenant."

Ozpin was looking over at his boss's actions as he said, "Sir, the Joker card had a trace of

your D.N.A. on it-" A sudden bang at the door is heard. Ozpin quickly pulls his weapon, then opens it.

Oobleck enters the office and hands over a piece of paper as Oz holsters his pistol once he saw who it was. "It's just the normal number of bad guys in the building Oz, and they're all city employees. Here's a list."

Weiss stood up, indignant over what Ozpin said. "How'd the hell did they get my D.N.A.?"

Ozpin looks at Oobleck's list as he responded, "Somebody with access to your house or office must've used a tissue, or a glass..."

Ozpin, realizing the reason, spins around and tries to stop her from drinking the liquid.

"No Wait WAIT-!" He yells but he was too late, Weiss is already choking. She leans over the desk, spilling her whiskey over, and slumps to the ground. Oz goes to her as he orders Oobleck to grab a medic. The spilled 'alcohol' on her desk is smoking, slowly eating away at the wood.

We now go to the penthouse again, inside a kitchen as James leads Glynda there, away from the crowd.

He then remarks "You cannot just leave me on my own with all these people."

Glynda looked amused by it. "The whole mob's after you, and you're worried about some rich guys?"

James looks behind him, checking to see if anyone's eavesdropping, then turns back. "Well compared to this, the mob doesn't scare me. Although I have to say; them gunning for you makes you see things more clearly."

She raises an eyebrow. "Oh really?" she asks. He nods back, "Of course. It makes you think about what you couldn't stand losing... And who you want to spend the rest of your life with..."

Glynda just looks at him and smiles. "The rest of your life, huh?" she teases "That's a pretty big commitment."

He sighs, "Not if the mob has their way." She walks closer to James and hugs him, "Don't. Don't do that to yourself"

James gently pulls her away but still within arm's reach. "Okay. Let's be serious then. What's

your answer?"

Glynda looks at him. "I don't have an answer."

In the living room, half the guests are lounging around. There is a knock at the front door.

Back in the kitchen, Glynda is looking at James. Torn. He sighs, "I guess no answer isn't 'no' then."

She shakes her head and tries to explain, "I'm sorry, James. I just..."

James 'figures' it out. "It's someone else, isn't it?" He looks around, then looks back to her, "Just please tell me it's not Whitley. The guy's a complete-" He is suddenly put in a sleeper hold by Whitley, Glynda wide-eyed at the display.

"What are you doing?!" Glynda whispers as she sees her friend choke out her boyfriend. James slumps, unconscious in Whitley's arms.

Klein goes over and opens it find Detective Adam, who's holds up his badge.

Whitley, as he drags the body to a nearby walk-in pantry, tells her "They've come for him." She looks back in alarm.

Klein beckons him inside when the man is pushed forward. Behind him is the Joker, a shotgun in his hands, and several of his goons next to him. "We made it."

In the kitchen, Whitley finishes putting James inside and closes the door. He then grabs a broom and pushes it through the handles. He then rushes past Glynda, leaving a last order to have her remain hidden.

Klein steps away from the clown as he raises his weapon to the air and shoots, the sound of the blast scaring everyone into silence.

The Joker and his thugs pour into the penthouse with their weapons pointed at the guests-turned-hostages.

The Joker looks to the silent masses, and smiling at them, he says "Good evening, ladies and gentlemen~. We're tonight's entertainment." He picks up an hors d'oeuvre and puts it in his mouth. As he tosses the stick back he says, "I only have one question: Where is James Ironwood?"

Only silence answers him, causing him to roll his eyes but with his smile still on display. He walks over to a few of the guests, pointing his gun at them.

He spots a woman with a glass of champagne in her hands and takes it with no resistance. Most of the champagne spilled into the ground as he took it, but a few drops remained, so he shrugged and chugged the last of it down. After he finished, he gently places it on a nearby table.

He steps next to a couple and as he asks his question, he slaps the guy to 'help' him jog his memory. "You know where he is? Know where he is?"

In a hallway, Whitley is walking in a brisk pace until he's spotted by a clown with a shotgun pointed at him. The clown says, "Hands up, pretty boy."

Whitley quickly flips the shotgun around in the man's hands, uses it as a lever to snap his forearm, and smashes him in the jaw with the stock. All without breaking stride, field stripping the weapon and tossing the pieces in different directions as he walks away from the knocked-out goon.

Back in the living room, Joker cups a man's jaw as he asks "You know where I can find James? I need to talk to him about something. Something, anything?" He puts his hand over the terrified man's head and mimics him shaking his head, "*sigh*No."

Back to Whitley, he exits the hallway and into a room occupied by two of his guests. Their ruffled clothing hinting what they were going before the Joker arrived.

Whitley spares them a glance as they try to put on their clothes. He then walks to a nearby wall as the man asks what was going on and presses a hidden button, causing part of the wall to recess. He then pushes the door back.

Noticing this, the woman said with relief in her voice "Oh thank heavens, you got a panic ro-" however Whitley closes the door, locking it back in place. "...Oh, you've got to be shitting me."

The Joker moves through the terrified guests. Smiling as he holds another appetizer and eats it. "Come on you guys. I'll even settle for his loved ones..." He steps to one of the guests, a distinguished looking gentleman.

The old man says, "We're not intimidated by thugs like you."

The Joker stops and observes the man's face. He smiles affectionately at him as he puts his gun down on a table. "You know...you actually remind me of my father." He nods, then quickly grabs him by the back of his head with one hand and the other holding a knife to just outside his mouth. "I HATED my father."

Off screen, Glynda yells "Ok Stop!" Joker glances to his side, and there in her beautiful dress is the lady friend of his last target.

The Joker lets go of the old man and turns to Glynda. "Well hello, beautiful." He starts fixing his hair and points his knife at her like he would a finger. "You must be James' squeeze..."

"...And you are beautiful." He finished once he got closer. He started to circle around her like a shark to his prey and saw her flinch away at his presence. He smiled at her as he stopped in front of her. "Oh, you look nervous... is it the scars? Wanna know how I got them?"

He grabs her face, "Come here" he lightly says. She struggles, refusing to look at him, but as the knife is firmly in place she stops. "Look at me." She did.

"So, I had a wife, like you. Who was beautiful, like you..." He begins as the screen starts to ripple again.

The screen shows a beautiful woman smiling at them, it was Pyrrha.

"...Who tells me, that I worry too much. Who says I need to smile more." It shows her and a regular Jaune sitting by a table, the young man looking miserable with Pyrrha trying her best to cheer him up. "Who gambles away and gets in deep, with the sharks." It cuts to him losing a bet and several shady-looking men approaching him afterwards. "One day they carve her face, only we've got no money for surgeries. She can't take it." It shows a vision of her going crazy. Her face is all cut up, her beauty forever marred.

It cuts back to present as Joker presses the knife into her cheek. "I just want to see her smile again." His voice starts to break, causing many to sympathize for him. "I just want her to know that I don't care about the scars!" The screen turns back to the 'flashback'.

It shows Jaune, desperately trying to let Pyrrha know that he doesn't care what she looks like, but to no avail. In his desperation, he gets an idea. He goes to the kitchen and take a razor. "So, I put a razor in my mouth..." He puts it inside his mouth and starts to carve his smile despite the pain he's exhibiting "...and do this, to myself..."

He then stops after the deed was done, and heads back to his still grieving wife and shows her the results. "...And you know what?" Once she saw what he did, she screamed in terror. "She can't stand the sight of me!" They see Pyrrha leave with a suitcase from her home, never to return. Jaune is left standing there in heartbreak. "She leaves..."

"Now I see the funny side. Now I'm always smiling." The 'flashback' ends, and it shows how the Joker steps away from Glynda, crazy smile proudly on display.


	6. 6

We cut to the Joker coming closer to Glynda again after finishing his tale, only for her to knee him in the balls. He bends over and retreats a bit back.

He just looks at her and smiles. "*wheeze* You have a little fight in you. I like that." He then straightens his posture and steps closer, as if the blow below the belt didn't do any damage.

Off screen a deeply gravelly voice said, "Then you're going to love me."

The Joker turns, only for Batman to slug him in the face with a left hook, spinning him down and disarming him in the process. The Joker's men then rush to attack him.

Batman takes them out two at a time, disarming thugs, breaking their bones. The Joker meanwhile gets back up and stomps his right foot, releasing a hidden blade from the toe of his shoe.

As one of his men got close enough to attack, his monkey tail revealing it to be Sun, he used his body as a distraction once he began to fight the Bat. He proceeds to kick Batman, jabbing him in between the armored plates covering his ribcage.

The blade got stuck after the second kick, and Batman, in response, hurls the Joker's body across the room. He gets up again as Sun lunges at Batman, but he quickly punches him in the face, knocking him out cold.

The Joker quickly goes to Glynda and presses another knife to her neck.

After disposing Sun, he turns around, only to stop at the sight. The Joker then grabs his discarded shotgun, knowing that he's safe so long as he keeps his meat shield within stabbing distance.

Batman narrows his gaze and says, "Drop the gun, Joker."

The Joker laughs a bit, and waves his gun in the air as he says, "Oh you want it? Sure. Just take off your mask and show us all who you really are..." his blade still on Glynda's neck.

Glynda tries shaking her head at Batman. The Joker then points his shotgun behind him and fires, blowing out the pane of glass and causing her to yelp in fright. The Joker then pushes Glynda to dangle out the window.

Batman glares harshly at him. "Let her go."

The Joker seemed to think so. He raised an eyebrow, then shrugs "Ok. Very poor choice of words though~" He laughs and lets her go, causing her to fall onto a sloping glass roof, sliding towards the edge as Batman dives after her.

Outside they drop as Glynda reaches out to him, screaming all the while, Batman grabs her just before they fell off the roof entirely. As they plummet to the ground, Batman takes out his grapple gun and fires at the nearby sign fixture of his family's symbol.

As they fall, he causes them to spin, slowing their momentum down significantly. Batman lets go of his grapple and envelopes Glynda just they slam into the hood of a parked taxi.

The driver inside screams as Batman and Glynda hit the roof, hurt but alive.

Inside a car the Joker is seen, causing the good guys to sigh in relief and the villains in disappointment. The Joker looks back as his car speeds away. He's breathing hard, exhilarated at the confrontation. He touches the blood running down his sweaty white makeup from the punch he received as next him, Sun is rubbing the bump on his head.

He smacks the back of the driver's seat.

The driver looks back, showing Neptune's smiling face. "Where to now, Boss?" He asks as he turns back to look at the road. The Joker smiles, "Oh, I think it's time we visit a certain little birdy. Don't you?" He fiddles around with his little bottle.

Back to the crushed cab, Glynda opens her eyes as Batman looks at her. "Are you alright?" He asks.

She just nods, happy to be alive right now. "Let's not do that again, okay?" She said, not wishing to experience another life-or-death situation again. She looks around, "Is James-?" But her friend reassured her that he was safe. Glynda lies back, breathing deeply, then looks up at Batman. "Thank you."

Cut to the Major Crimes Unit (MCU) the next day.

Oobleck is seen talking to Ozpin, subdued.

"Oz, it's over."

Oz shacks his head and tries to reassure his friend. "As long as they don't get to Watts, we'll still be able to cut off their wallets."

Oobleck was quick to shoot that down. "But the prosecution's over Oz." he sighs despondently, "No-one's willing to stand up in front of a Judge while judges and police commissioners are getting killed left and right."

Ozpin remained adamant however. "What about James?"

Oobleck snorts and shakes his head, "If he's got any sense he's halfway to Menagerie by now."

The door suddenly bursts open and James walks in, a fire in his eyes.

He looks to the two officers "So where do you keep your trash?" he asks. Ozpin at first looks at James, impressed. He then nods and motions him to follow.

Inside one of the special holding cells, Watts looks up as James walks in, holding a bulletproof vest.

James tells him, "You're due in court. Here, I need to keep you alive long enough to get you on the record."

Watts looks at the 'protection' in amusement, and shakes his head, "No. You can't protect me, you can't even protect yourselves." He jabs at the man, reminding him of how well they protected someone last time.

James glares and throws the heavy vest at Watts anyway. "You refuse to cooperate on the stand, and you won't be coming back here. Oh no, your ass is going straight to county. How long do you calculate you'll last in there?"

We cut to an exterior shot of an expensive-looking casino in the early morning. It then switches over to a parking lot at the back of the building, where multiple cars are parked with criminals coming out of them.

The scene changes to what looks like a corporate boardroom.

At the long table are most of Vale's remaining crime lords; the only ones not at attendance are Jacques and Roman, their seats currently empty. Several of the bosses are staring suspiciously at the head of the table, where the one who summoned them is seething in rage.

Raven was pissed.

She had recently found out that the Joker had murdered Junior. What few people knew was that the two were married. Even less knew that the twins that frequently protected him are their daughters. And now the Joker has them.

She was also angry that Gelé and Torchwick refused to show up. "Where are those two idiots?!" She shouted, her weapon left by her seat as she paced back and forth.

Just then a slow, familiar laugh started to echo throughout the boardroom, much to Raven's growing anger. The front doors slowly open, and the Joker strolls on in, Sun and Neptune on either side and mostly healed.

The mob bosses look on in fear as the killer of one of their own just strolls on in. Raven was looking to her weapon as he sits down on the opposite end where Junior used to sit.

"Oh, I'm sorry, am I interrupting something? Because if I am, then I can always come back." the Joker asks as he points behind him, snickering how some of the bosses shook their heads rapidly. "Well, if not then I just came by to say that I'm almost done with my task and that-"

Raven impatiently interrupts him. "Where are my daughters, Joker!" The bosses flinch in fear at the tone, but that feeling quickly turned to shock once the words registered.

The Joker paused and looked at her, tilting his head as if deep in thought. "Who?"

Raven narrowed her eyes, and as she was opening her mouth to scream at him again, he snapped his fingers and says, "Oooh, you mean the twins! Wait, they're yours?" He looks genuinely surprised by that. "Huh. Never would've guessed."

"Sun," he motioned to him, "Yeah boss?"

"Call them up." He orders as Sun nodded. "You got it." He then takes out his scroll, and after calling the proper number, sets it on the table after putting it on speaker.

"MOM!" two voices called out in fear.

"Sweethearts!" She yelled in slight relief as she got closer to the device, much to Yang's surprise and jealousy. She then turned and glared at the Joker as he started to laugh at her. "What did you do to them?!"

He smiled as he rose up and walked close to her. "Who me? Nothing...." His smile turned, and he became serious. "...yet"

He then looked around at the mobsters as he announced, "You see, thanks to Junior's unfortunate passing, I now control a lot of his territory." His two goons nod in pride. "And now," he turns to face her again, "You're going to hand over yours."

Raven glared harder at him, "And why would I do that?" she gritted out.

Joker smirked, "Well~, if you don't, your little girls will just have to pay the same price as their father..."

"And if I refuse?" Raven asks, much to everyone's shock, hoping that she could bluff him. Joker shrugged. "I've already considered that possibility. Afterall, I know you can be rather stubborn."

"MOM! Please, just do what he says! We don't want to die!" the twins started to cry, begging for their mother to save them. Joker smiled, seeing the fear in the mother's eyes.

"Well, what's it going to be?" he taunts. Raven shakes in rage, but the sounds of her little angels crying drained the fight out of her. She sighed and slumps in defeat. "Fine. You win."

Joker laughed as the mobsters look on in surprise. "I knew you would see it my way." He picks up the scroll with his left hand, and after taking it off speakers, he says "You hear that girls? Mommy dearest complied to let you go."

He then walks over to her and raised his right hand, "Shake on it?"

She glared at him. She then said, "You will pay for this. I swear by my honor that I will personally hunt you down. I'll never stop until my blade pierces your heart."

The Joker just nods. "Oh, I know. As I said, you can be very stubborn. Shake?" He insisted, still holding his hand up. She snarls as she does so. What she doesn't notice was what looked like a joy buzzer concealed in the Joker's palm.

As she shook his hand, 40,000 volts suddenly coursed through her body. Sparks start to emit from her as she screamed in pain. After a couple seconds of this, she lets go of his hand and falls backwards, dead.

The other crime lords recoiled in horror. Before they can make a move, a squad of armed thugs with clown masks burst into the room. The Joker looked around and said, "Looks like Raven got a little hot under the collar." He snickered.

One boss yelled out "You're insane!" The Joker looked at him dully, "No shit, sherlock" He then addressed everyone as he walked over to the seat that held Raven's sword. He grabbed it much to the woman's fury.

He then took his scroll and ordered "You can come in now." After he said that, a few more goons entered, flanking a pair of women in matching dresses, one red the other white, and both with matching opera masks. "Nice work out there, ladies. Really sold it to dear old mom." He said.

The twins giggled and looked at the Joker as they took off their masks, their faces in a fake scared expression. "Oh mommy, please don't let the big, bad clown hurt us!" They then proceeded to laugh at the corpse mockingly.

After laughing a bit, the two looked at the man who handed over their mother's sword like it was a trophy. They accepted it and turned to glare at each other before putting on their masks again.

As this was happening, he turned to the rest of the bosses, "Well, now that that's over, I think we're done here. Boys?" The sickened bosses look as his men begin passing around clown masks to their security. Their men look to be in contemplation, before most of them to their shock put them on.

After they did so, the Joker starts to leave. But then stops, as if just remembering something. "Oh wait," He smacks his forehead, then takes out his scroll, calling one of his men. After it answers he says, "Oh Sage~, it's time."

We cut to a ventilation system control room where Sage, and some clown goons, were working the controls and waiting for the Joker's signal. Just then, his scroll vibrated. He took it out and seeing who was calling him, answered "Yeah boss?" "OhSage~, it's time." "You got it boss." He closed his scroll and turned to his men.

"Ok boys, the boss says to proceed." The goons then punched some commands in the control panels, making the ventilation shafts stop working around the conference room. all the while Sage went to one of the pipes that led directly to the conference room and took out the container that his men worked so hard to make. He then opened the pipe.

After waiting for the go ahead from one of his boys, he puts on a clown mask and opens the container. Immediately, green smoke started to emanate from the device, and he quickly tossed it into the pipe and closed it back up.

We cut back to the conference room as the Joker signaled his men to lock the doors. He then looked around the other bosses. "You know," he said, gaining their attention, "just so we're all clear, I didn't really mean to introduce this so soon, so I do have to apologize." Soon, green smoke started to seep through the ventilation ducts, causing the bosses to panic as well as those who didn't put on the masks.

As the gas start to spread, Joker puts on a mask that Sun passed him. After securing it, he looks at the panicked people, and sighs in disappointment. "I really didn't want to do this, but Roman and Jacques didn't give me much choice, so if you want to blame anyone for this: blame them." He reveals, much to everyone's shock.

Once everyone started to breath the gas, they began coughing. And then it happened.

It started with one of the bosses starting to unconsciously chuckle, then one of the unmasked goons began to giggle as she struggled to cover her mouth with her hands. Then more and more started to laugh as they stopped trying to cover their faces. A few seconds passed and everyone not in a mask were laughing uncontrollably as they started to experience body spasms. They started to drop to the ground, their hands raised to the ones left standing, silently pleading for their help as they were unable to breathe anymore. The image shows that their faces were contorting into nightmarish grins as their eyes reflected the fear they were feeling. Before long, the laughter died down, everyone dead with large smiles on their faces.

The goons who recently joined the Joker's ranks felt the same way. They just saw their coworkers, some of whom were friends, die violently and were thanking their lucky stars that they put on the masks. Any thoughts of betraying the mad clown vanished instantly.

The Joker meanwhile just texted Sage to stop pumping the gas. Once the ducts stopped, he took off his mask and went to one of the dead mob bosses, kneeling besides him. He flipped him over, and saw the results of the gas, sighed in disappointment. "I really am sorry that this had to happen" he softly said to the corpse, stroking his hair like a parent. "This really isn't my style, it's too quick."

He then stood up, and turned to his new henchmen, tears running down his face, "This is why I prefer knives." The new guys took off their own masks, crying at the scene and seeing their new boss look so remorseful. Then they remembered what he said a few minutes ago, "I really didn't want to do this, but Roman and Jacques didn't give me much choice, so if you want to blame anyone for this: blame them."

As they remembered this, they started to feel anger at the two men beginning to rise. Some of them even began to snarl and growl.

"Come on. Let's go people." The Joker softly said, sighing as his men vacated the room. He pulled up his scroll and signaled Sage to leave.

We cut back to the bat-bunker, where Whitley is sitting at his video screens and Klein standing nearby. They all play the Joker's video with different image treatments and sound tunings. He then turns to Klein, indicating the screens.

"Targeting me won't get the mob their money back." He analyzed. "I knew that they wouldn't go down without a fight, but this is different. They've crossed a line."

Klein shook his head, "You crossed it first, sir. You've battered and squeezed them to the point of desperation. And now, in their desperation they've turned to a man they don't fully understand." He points to one of the monitors, showing a closeup of the Joker.

Whitley gets up from his monitors and opens a cabinet. "Criminals aren't complicated, Klein. We just have to figure out what he's after."

Klein shook his head at that and rebuked with, "Respectfully, Master Whitley, perhaps this is a man you don't fully understand, either." Whitley stands up and heads to another table.

Klein follows him and looks at Whitley as he continues, "I was once in Wind Path. A long time ago." He began, regaining his friend's attention. "My friends and I were working, for the local government. They were trying to buy the loyalty of local tribal leaders. Bribing them with precious stones. But their caravans were being raided in a forest north of Mistral by a bandit. We were asked to take care of the problem, so we started looking for the stones. But after six months, we couldn't find anyone who had traded with him."

Whitley raised an eyebrow. "What were you missing?"

Klein continued, "One day, we found a child playing with a ruby as big as a tangerine," he shrugs, "The bandit had been throwing the stones away."

Whitley asked, "So why was he stealing them?"

Klein offered his opinion. "Well because he thought it was good sport. Because some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money... they can't be bought, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with." Here his tone turned grave, "Some men, just want to watch the world burn."

Whitley stares at Klein, then reaches for the bat-suit.

We cut to a skyline view of Vale, very early the next morning.

Moving over the city we hear a myriad of radio calls going out. Closing in to a lonely figure on top of a skyscraper, the Batman is listening with his rather expensive earpieces. From the noise, one voice is heard above the rest.

"Dispatch. Your name, sir. Please state-"

A voice interrupts them halfway through. "8th at Orchard. You'll find James Ironwood there."

At the address of the mentioned street, an unmarked car and a police squad car screech to a halt. Ozpin and Blake get out, leading two others into the building.

Inside the apartment, the door smashes open, and Ozpin enters, his gun drawn as he takes in the scene. The rest move in and he orders them to fan out and look for any clues. He then walks to the kitchen, where two dead men are sitting at the table. As he moves closer, he notices that they were each holding a hand of cards, as if in the middle of a game.

All the cards were Joker cards.

Blake enters the room, and the two of them stare at the crude smiles drawn on their faces. Their drivers' licenses pinned to their chests.

A dark voice is heard, "Check the names." Ozpin quickly goes over and checks the licenses. "Patrick Ironwood. Richard James..."

Blake said, "James Ironwood." Immediately getting the connection between the names.

Batman stepped away from the shadows. "I need ten minutes with the scene before your men contaminate it."

Blake suddenly glared at the man, "Us contaminate it? It's because of you that these guys are dead in the fir-"

Ozpin just said "Blake" and she immediately stood down.

Batman meanwhile moves past the bodies to the wall behind them and finds an embedded stray bullet. He pulls a sawing device from his belt of wonders and thrusts it into the wall and starts cutting around the bullet.

Ozpin looks at what he's doing and says, "That's brick, you know that right? You're gonna try and take ballistics from a shattered bullet?" He didn't know what the hell he was planning on doing with that.

Batman, not taking his eyes off the wall says, "No. Fingerprints."

Blake looks at Ozpin. "Is he serious? Oz-"

Ozpin nods and says, "Whatever you're gonna do, do it fast. Because we know his next target..." he raised a newspaper that was beside one of the corpses.

Batman, after finishing up and carefully taking the piece of wall out, turns and looks. Printed on the paper was a campaign poster with 'Reelect Mayor Port' typed in the front and a picture of the portly man underneath. The Mayor's image in the sign also has a clown's grin and "HA, HA, HA" painted on.

We then cut to inside Adrian's office inside Schnee Enterprises, several hours later. There we see the man sitting at his desk, looking over some paperwork. Just then Scarlet enters.

He looks up from his work and greets the man, "What can I do for you, Mr. David?"

Scarlet sits down and places a folder on the desk. "You asked me to do the diligence on the Watts' Industries deal again. Well, I found some irregularities."

The man looks at the man in puzzlement, "Their CEO is in police custody at the moment." But Scarlet shakes his head, "Not with their numbers sir. With yours. A whole division of Schnee Enterprises disappeared, overnight. So, I went down to the archives and started pulling old files." He pulls out a folded blueprint from the folder and slides it across the desk.

Scarlet continued, "My kids love the Batman. I thought he was cool too. Going out every night, kicking some ass." Adrian picks up the piece of paper and unfolds it. It was an old blueprint of a familiar vehicle, the Tumbler.

"Things change when you realize that it's just a rich kid playing dress up." He points to the approval box in the corner of the page, along with Adrian's signature. "Don't tell me you didn't recognize your baby pancaking cop cars on the evening news. You are just getting sloppy now. Applied Sciences was a small, dead department, who'd notice? But now you've got the entire R&D department burning lien, claiming it's related to cell phones for the army. What are you building him now? A rocket ship?" He asks incredulously.

Scarlet then said, "I want ten million lien, every year, for the rest of my life."

Adrian just looks at him evenly, not expressing what he may be thinking. Then he folds up the blueprint and says with an eyebrow raised, "So let me get this straight. You think that your client, one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the world, is secretly a vigilante who spends his nights beating up criminals to a pulp with his bare hands..."

He then deadpans at the man, "And your plan, is to blackmail him?"

Scarlet just stares at Adrian, his mouth opening and closing but no words were coming out. Adrian smiles and slides the blueprint back across the desk.

He looks at the dumbass and says, "Good luck."

He looks at it, then at Adrian. He swallows, realizing the dilemma he was in, and leaves the office.


	7. 7

We cut to the Bat-Bunker a few hours later.

There we see Whitley hard at work on the computer, loading up its 3D simulator. He then hands Klein a rifle bullet with the tip scribed in a grid pattern, who dutifully slots it into a clip, then loads it into a computer-controlled Gatling gun with the barrel pointing upwards.

The two then puts on ear protectors as Klein presses a button, and the two watch as the gun whirs to life. It quickly moves across to the other side of the platform, then it points its barrel forward. As it's moving back to its original position, it would continuously blast a single bullet into a series of four identical brick wall samples that were on separate stands on the other side of the bunker.

After the last shot was fired, Whitley goes to check the results, the brick from the crime scene on hand.

As he's walking past, he hears Klein's remark, "I'm not sure you made it loud enough, sir."

With the samples still smoking from the blasts, Whitley steps closer, lifting his sample up and starts to compare its spread to the others.

In the end, he selects the third one on the left as the most comparable and carries it to an x-ray scanner. He starts up the machine and it gives the sample a 3-axis scan. As it's doing its job, he's looking at the 3D simulator's screen as hi-res 3D images of the bullet fragment array comes up on the screen.

Inside the Applied Sciences Division 30 minutes later, that same image of the bullet fragment is on a screen. On the left, we see Whitley and to the right, Adrian looking at the screen.

Adrian hits a key for the computer to start to 'reassemble' the bullet according to the grid that was grafted on the fragment beforehand. He then points to the screen, "Here's your original scan..." The fragments begin to converge, more closely resembling the bullet. "And here it is reverse-engineered..." He hits a series of commands and the computer finishes reassembling the fragments.

Whitley clicks on the mouse, and the computer spins the roughly-shaped bullet puzzle. He stops it at a specific angle, "And here's the thumb print he left when he pushed the round in the clip." He points out as his friend looks on, impressed.

Adrian nods, "I'll make you a copy then." before he looks back at the younger man, a troubled expression showing on his face, "did you reassign R&D?"

Whitley immediately nods and says "Yes. Government telecommunications project."

Adrian shakes his head in confusion at the news, "I wasn't aware we had any new government contracts. Can you-"

But Whitley cuts him off, "Adrian. I want to play this one close to the chest."

He raises his hands in surrender and nods, "Fair enough." He looks at his boss as he leaves, a bit uneasy for what he'll do with that research.

The screen then goes to an overhead view of Parkside Avenue at noon the next day. The avenue has been blocked off by the police with onlookers lining the sidewalks. Bagpipers playing their instruments, Police marching in their dress uniform, Ozpin and his men, and a coffin with a Vale Flag on top in the middle of the cops.

Lisa's voice was heard as the screen moves to a stand on the sidewalk. "With no word from the Batman even as they mourn Commissioner Frost, these cops have to be wondering if the Joker is going to make good on his threat to kill the Mayor today..." It shows a closeup of Lisa as she holds up a newspaper with a picture of Port.

We cut back to the bunker, where Whitley was sitting down and examining the fingerprint on-screen, while Klein stood behind and to the right of him.

He then points at a different screen that had several pictures posted on it, "I've run it through all the databases and came up with four possibilities." He gets up to let Klein sit. "Cross-reference their addresses Klein. Look for Parkside, overlooking the parade." He says as he opens a hydraulic door imbedded into a wall, revealing a rather nice bike.

As he moves the bike onto the lift, Klein was typing commands on the computer, then he stopped to announce his findings. "Got one. Arthur Fleck, aggravated assault, moved to Arkham twice- 1502 Randolph Apartments, just off State."

Whitley then drives off in his bike.

Back to the parade, on the buildings above, police snipers are scanning the crowd. It briefly shows Whitley's bike pulling up on one of the backstreets.

It then shows Ozpin keying his scroll, "How's it looking up top boys?" One of the snipers goes to report, "We're tight up here. But quite frankly sir... there's a lot of windows up here." Oz looks up at the buildings overlooking the podium, looking at the shitload of windows lining up the road that his men must guard.

We cut back to Whitley as he pulls up near a parade barricade, and dismounts after turning it off; slipping into an alley and opening one of the many backdoors before entering.

We now go inside the apartment, where some of the building's tenants are eyeing Whitley as he counts the doors down the hallway before he eventually finds 1502.

Cutting back to the street, a veritable sea of police has filled the avenue. At the end of the street, a platform was seen with Weiss' grieving family and an honor guard to protect them. The Mayor steps up to the podium, Oz sitting behind at the front row, and James is seated with Glynda.

Port then starts his speech, "Commissioner Frost dedicated her life to law enforcement, and to the protection of her community.

"I remember when I first took office, and I asked her if she wanted to stay on as commissioner." We cut to Whitley entering the suite, "And she said that she would, so long as I kept my politics out of her office." the speech faded as he closed the door.

As he walks slowly through the hallway, he stops when he sees eight men bound, gagged, and blindfolded in their underwear, a sniper scope on a tripod at the nearby window.

We cut back to Port, "Clearly, she was not a woman who minced words, nor should she have been. A few policies that she placed were unpopular. Policies that flooded my office with angry calls and letters..."

Whitley is quickly moving to one of the men, kneels next to him, and rips the tape from his mouth.

"Ah!" The man yelped in pain. He was breathing hard, "W-Who's there?!" as he 'looked' for the mystery person.

Whitley, in his Batman voice, asked "What happened?"

The man took a moment to compose himself, relieved like the rest that Batman was the one who found them, "They took... they took our guns, and our uniforms..."

He looks back at the tripod, then he stands up and goes over to it. As the screen goes to the window that had its shade pulled down, and an egg timer was seen on the sill, ticking away.

As he stepped closer, Port's voice was heard "...and as we recognize the sacrifice of this woman..." We cut back to Port, "...we must remember that vigilance is the price of safety." The Mayor wraps up.

the Honor Guard then steps forward, one of them ordering "Stand by. Honor Guard. Attention." The Honor Guard straightens their posture. "Port Arms." They pulled their weapons to their chests. "Ready! Aim! Fire!" They raise their weapons, then fire once. As the screen moves through the line of Honor Guard, a familiar face was briefly seen.

Back to the apartment, Whitley made it to the window and looks through the scope to see what it was pointing to, all the while another order of the Captain was heard "Ready! Aim!" Just as he reached it, the egg timer dinged, and the shade was quickly pulled up. Outside to a nearby fire escape staircase, one of the snipers quickly sees the movement and immediately raised his rifle and shot off several rounds, nearly hitting him as he ducks the shots, "Fire!"

Back to the street, the Honor Guard was about to finish their salute, the sounds of the second rounds going off hiding that of the sniper rounds, "Ready!" As the order was about to finish, the screen continues to pass through the line, a cop with a VERY familiar face was seen "Aim!", before ALL the Honor Guard turned their weapons on the mayor. "Fire!"

Oz immediately leaps forward just as the Joker fires, the bullet hitting Oz in the back as he slams the Mayor to the ground, saving him.

The crowd immediately went wild. The cops were springing into action they but were somewhat impeded by the panicking civilians blocking their path. The Joker smiles knowingly as he and his men drop their weapons and attempt to escape. One of the cops shoots a fake Honor Guard in the back of the leg, causing him to drop to the floor in pain and his cap falling off, revealing the unobscured face of Qrow Branwen. The others however managed to melt into the chaos.

On the podium, Bart quickly checks his surrounding with his gun pointed forwards, before he moves to his friend's body. He orders a nearby cop to take Port out of there, James and Glynda following behind. He rolls Oz's body over, but he stops and drops his gun, tears beginning to fall. Oz's eyes were closed with his spectacles nowhere on his face. He wasn't breathing.

Bart placed a shaking hand on his neck, praying that what he was seeing was just a dream, but he then placed it instead on his chest. He couldn't find a pulse.

Back with the couple, James rushed back to find if his friend was ok, much to Glynda's fear for his own safety, and goes to where Bart is. The forlorn expression he had when he arrived told what the answer was.

He looks around, wanting to find some answers, and finds an ambulance. In his own grief, he goes to the side street and approaches the ambulance sitting in the alley. The two cops there jumped out and rush over to their beloved lieutenant. James took advantage of that and steps up into the back. Inside the back, Qrow was sitting there, handcuffed.

The nearby paramedic was, rather reluctantly, bandaging his leg. It was chaos outside. Cops were running past, barking orders. James walks in and orders the paramedic to go see if anyone else was injured. The man gladly left, and James looked at the man who had a hand in the murder of his friend. "Tell me what you know about the Joker."

Qrow just looks at him, smirking, before looking down at his uniform.

James follows his gaze and spots something. He moves closer, the man's name tag... He grabs the uniform and roughly pulls it forwards so that he could see more clearly. It read 'OFFICER GLYNDA GOODWITCH'.

James glared at the tag then he looks back to Qrow as he began to chuckle at him.

He then spies the keys in the ignition. He looks back outside to see if anyone was looking their way, and once he saw that no one was, he jumps into the driver's seat and turns on the ignition.

Qrow seeing what was happening, immediately tries to escape, but the cuffs were preventing him from doing so.

The screen changes to a rather nice and medium sized home at dusk, where Bart and Blake comes up the front yard and knocks at the door. The door soon opens to a human Salem, looking scared at seeing them.

As she moved to stand in the doorway, she looks between the two. "No" she whispered. Blake lowers her gaze as Bart steps forwards, "I'm sorry, Salem." he softly says.

Suddenly, a little blond girl in a blue dress pushes past his mother to look at Bart.

Salem tries to push her daughter back inside. "Oma, go play with your sisters, go ahead honey." Oma goes back inside but stays just inside the door as the screen focuses on her, her tears falling as she subconsciously knew the reason for her mommy's sadness.

Salem's sobs were heard as Bart tries to comfort his friend's wife, "I'm sorry. If there's anything we can do, anything you need, we're here for you." Salem continued to cry as Bart hugged her, the screen looking to them to show Bart in tears as well.

Then she started to speak, "Are you out there? Are you?!" Oma was confused until she looked further out and spotted something. Batman was there, perched in the shadows. Salem continued, "You brought this on us! This craziness! You did! YOU BROUGHT THIS CRAZINESS ON US!" She then collapses, Oma and Bart by her side.

Just then, three more girls in green, brown, and pink dresses came rushing over crying, their tears evident that they heard everything, and knew that their daddy wasn't coming back. Batman just hangs his head in shame.

It cuts to the roof of the MCU later that night. Detectives stand around the lit bat-signal, but after a few seconds Bart looks to one of them. "Switch it off." He orders. "He isn't coming. He doesn't want to talk to us. Oum help whoever he does want to talk to."

It then cuts to the interior of a nightclub. Strobe lights blinding those on the ground; loud, pounding music drowning out all other noise; and smoke from cigarettes and other drugs were making the air all foggy. Jacques is in a booth on the second floor at the side with his mistress; his bodyguards sitting around several nearby tables.

The woman was looking at him as she shouted over the music, "Can't we go someplace quieter! We can't hear each other talk!" He just looked forwards as he asked softly "Why the hell would I want to hear you talk?" The woman didn't catch that. "What?!"

Just then, one of his bodyguards stationed in a nearby catwalk drops off the ledge. Jacques looks over. In the strobe lights, Batman was just barely seen annihilating his bodyguards there. He raised his hand and points it to Batman. The guards behind him understood and moved to intercept the caped crusader. Not that that helped, he just got more brutal in his execution, breaking bones as he passed instead of simply punching, and thus knocking, them out.

Jacques starts to get out of his seat, but Batman lands like a panther on the table in front of him and grabs his suit.

Back inside the MCU, Glynda was moving through the chaotic bullpen filled with eyewitnesses, civilian and cop questioned. Glynda's scroll suddenly rings. When she saw who called her, she answered it. "James, where are you?!"

The screen intercuts with James in a dark space. "Where are you?"

Glynda answered, rolling her eyes, "Where you should be, you ass: Major Crimes trying to sort through all the-", but James interrupted her mid-rant. "Glynda, listen to me. You're not safe there."

Glynda darted around her surrounding, narrowing her eyes all the while, "This is Ozpin's unit, James" He shook his head, "Oz's gone, Glynda."

But she was stubborn. "He vouched for these men-" "-And he's gone." He finished her sentence as he started to pace back and forth, "The Joker's named you next." Glynda looks around the bullpen, eyeing the detectives that were hard at work. James took a shaky breath as he ran a hand through his hair, "Glynda, I can't let anything happen to you. I just love you too much.

"Is there someone, anyone in this city we can trust?" Glynda didn't even have to pause in her choice "Whitley. We can trust Whitley Schnee."

James stopped his pacing, "Look, I know he's your friend but-" "-Trust me, James. Whitley's penthouse is the safest place in the city right now." James nodded, knowing a losing argument when he saw one, "Okay. Go straight there. Don't tell anyone where you're going. I'll find you there."

The screen stays at James, the image moving back shows us he is inside the basement of a condemned building. James finished with "I love you." He then hangs up the scroll and looks to the side. Taped to a chair in front of him was a blindfolded Qrow. He rips off the blindfold, showing the slightly crazed look in his eyes.

Outside a fire escape, Batman is holding Jacques by the collar over the edge.

Batman glares at the crime lord, "I want the Joker." Jacques looks down, smirks, then looks back. "From one professional to another, some advice. If you're trying to scare someone, pick a better spot. From this height, the fall wouldn't kill me." Batman sadistically smirks, "I'm counting on it." He then lets go of his grip. As Jacques fell about three stories, he was screaming like a little girl, before he lands on the hard pavement with a loud crack.

He was clutching his badly broken leg. Batman meanwhile jumps and glides down, landing over him, and roughly hauls him up. Jacques hollers in pain from the movement. Batman asks again, "Where is he?"

He shakes his head, "I don't know, he found us." But he wasn't taking that as an answer. "He must have friends." he growled.

"Friends?" He asked with a slight smirk, "Have you met this guy?"

Batman was running out of patience, "Someone must know where he is." Jacques just looks up at him, sneering. In an ominous tone, he said "No one's gonna tell you anything. They're wise to your act, you got rules." He smirks as he shakes his head. "The Joker, he's got no rules. No one's gonna cross him for you. You want him, you got one way. But you already know what that is, don't you? Just take off that mask and let him come to you." Batman drops him back to the ground and leaves, but not before he hears Jacques parting words. "Or do you want to let a couple more people get killed while you make up your mind?"


	8. 8

After the man's parting words, we cut back to the condemned building, where James is seen reaching into his coat pockets. He pulls out and shows Qrow a gun in one hand. Then some bullets in the other and loading the gun immediately afterwards.

He then shoves the gun to his face.

"You wanna play games?" He asks with a sneer. He pushes the gun deeper against Qrow's head with real malice. Qrow just smirks at him, "You're bluffing." James narrows his eyes, pulls his gun away to the side and fires. Qrow flinched and his eyes widen. James slowly puts the gun barrel against his temple again.

Qrow, rattled by the very REAL treat of eating a bullet, says "You wouldn't..."

"I WOULDN'T!" James shouts as he moves closer to him.

Then, he suddenly turns calm. He reaches into his pocket again and pulls his lucky coin out. "No." he says calmly, "I wouldn't. That's why I'm not going to leave it up to me." He then shows him one side, "Heads: you get to keep your head. Tails:..." he shrugs, but doesn't show the other half, "not so lucky. So, you want to tell me about the Joker?" Qrow, scared, says nothing.

James flicks the coin into the air, and once it's close enough slaps it onto the back of his gun hand, aiming with his wrist horizontal.

Qrow, and the heroes in the audience, holds his breath. He shows him the result, "Heads." Qrow exhales, shaking like a leaf.

"Go again?" He asks rhetorically.

Qrow, now sobbing, yells out "I don't know anything!" James didn't believe him and points his gun at him again. "You're not playing the odds, my friend." He pulls the gun away again. "Again."

He tosses the coin, but this time it doesn't land, a hand grabs it before it could. They look to the side, and sees Batman, much to the thug's relief and James' exasperation.

Batman looks disappointedly at him, "You'd leave a man's life to chance?" He asks enraged. James however, doesn't back down and looks directly in his eyes. "Not exactly."

Batman shakes his head and points to the tied-up man. "His name's Branwen, Qrow. He's a paranoid schizophrenic, a former patient at Arkham. The kind of mind the Joker attracts." Batman moves away from Branwen.

As he passes James, he says "What do expect to learn from him?" The man turns around, shivering with frustration.

He looks at Batman's back, "The Joker killed Oz, and the Frost sisters. He's going to kill Glynda next and I..." He looks so lost in that moment, he couldn't imagine what a world would be like without her in his life.

Batman turns around and gives him a long glance, "You're the symbol of hope that I could never be. Your stand against organized crime is the first, legitimate, ray of light that Vale has seen in decades."

He points at Qrow behind them, "If anyone saw this, everything will be undone. All the criminals you pulled off the streets would be released. And Ozpin will have died for nothing."

Batman walks close to James and hands him his lucky coin back, then he says, "You're going to call a press conference, tomorrow morning."

James looks confused. "Why?"

Batman turns away in guilt and walks away, "No one else will die because of me. Vale is in your hands, now." As he leaves, James shakes his head in disbelief. "You can't. You can't give in! YOU CAN'T GIVE IN!"

The scene changes to inside a bedroom, inside Whitley's penthouse, where Glynda is standing by the window, watching over the city.

Whitley then enters the room.

Not turning away from the sight, she says "James called. He says Batman is going to turn himself in." Whitley walks closer, shaking his head as he stops at the foot of the bed behind her, "I have no choice." he says softly.

Glynda had enough and turns to face him with an angry expression on her face. "And you honestly believe that this is going to stop the Joker from killing anymore innocent people?"

He sighs as he briefly closes his eyes, "Maybe not. But I've got enough blood on my hands." his posture is that of a man whose had a heavy burden, and that burden has broken him. "I see now, what I would have to become to stop men like him."

Glynda looks at her friend, knowing that she cannot help him. Whitley turns away and looks out the window, "You once told me that if the day came when I was finished..." He looks back and moves even closer to her. "We'd be together." he stops before her, and gazes into her green eyes.

Glynda broke the gaze and wraps her arms around herself, "Whitley, don't make me your one hope for a normal life." He takes her in his arms. "But did you mean it?"

She hesitates, then nods. "Yes." He pulls her into a kiss.

As they separate, she looks sadly into his eyes. "But they won't let us be together after you turn yourself in."

Whitley nods, and leaves. She watches him go.

Inside the bunker, a few hours later, we see Whitley deleting everything from the computer banks, while Klein is shoveling documents into an incinerator. Blueprints, designs, files, anything and everything that could be considered evidence, or instructions for others to use that information for ill was being destroyed.

He pauses, looking down at a book. "Even the logs, sir?" he turns to his friend. Whitley nods, not turning away from his work. "Anything that could lead this back to Adrian or Glynda."

Klein nods and tosses the book onto the fire. He then turns and stares hard at Whitley as he finishes.

The billionaire looks to his friend, defeated. "People are dying, Klein." He bows his head, "What would you have me do?"

Klein narrows his eyes into Whitley's form with a fearsome gaze as he walks closer. "Endure, Master Whitley." The younger man looks back. "Take it. They'll hate you for it, sure. But that's the point of Batman... he can be the outcast. He can make the choice, that no one else can. The right choice."

Whitley shakes his head as he gets up and puts his jacket on. The two then start to leave. "Today I've found out what Batman can't do. He can't endure this."

With a rueful smile, he continues. "I suppose today is the day you get to say, 'I told you so'." He finishes as the two walk side by side towards the lift.

Klein, with a heavy long coat on, shakes his head and with a smile says "Today, I don't want to." He paused and leans to the side towards his charge, "Although I did bloody tell you."

As the two get on the lift, the Bat-suit sinks into the floor, and the incinerator's door is shut. As the lights turn off starting at the opposite end, Klein makes one final remark. "Although I suppose they'll lock me up as well. Being your accomplice and all." The lift moves up as Whitley turns to his friend with a raised eyebrow, "Accomplice? I'm going to tell them the whole thing was your idea." The two are gone, and the last of the lights powers down, leaving the bunker in darkness.

The image moves to a press room of the Superior Court, in the early afternoon. There, a capacity crowd of reporters, cops, and other public officials have shown up. Standing in front of the podium is James. Whitley is sitting in the crowd, two rows from the front.

James clears his throat and leans toward the mikes, "Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you all for coming. I've called this press conference for two reasons. Firstly, to assure the citizens of Vale that everything that can be done over the Joker killings is being done. Secondly, because I have received word that the Batman has offered to turn himself in."

The crowd begins to go wild; reporters standing up to ask questions, flashes from cameras being seen. Lisa could be heard shouting "So, where is he?!"

But James continued, "But first. Let's consider the situation: should we give in to this terrorist's demands? Do we really think that-" a different reporter interrupted him, "You'd rather protect an outlaw vigilante than the lives of our citizens?!" The crowd noisily agrees with the reporter. James just calmly motions for them to quiet down. After they settled down, he looked to the reporter. "The Batman is an outlaw..."

Back to the penthouse, Glynda is seen watching the press conference on TV. His voice was heard, "But that's not why we're demanding that he turns himself in. No, we're doing it because we're scared. We've been happy to let Batman clean up our streets for us until now." She was tearing up at what he is being forced to do.

We cut back to the conference room, where another person shouts "Things are worse than ever!" Whitley flinches and looks at the person, then at the angry crowd. He bows his head and looks back to James as he leans over the podium.

With an impassioned expression, James says "Yes, they are. But the night is darkest before the dawn. And I promise you, the dawn is coming." his speech silences the crowd, "One day, the Batman will have to answer for the laws he's broken, but to us! Not this madman!" The crowd seems moved by his words, then, a chant erupts. It started when one of the people shouted out "NO MORE DEAD COPS!" which had the crowd repeat the cry. Lisa, only adding to the fire, shouts "WHERE IS THE BATMAN?" People take up that as well.

James had lost them, he knows it. In a sad tone, he said "So be it." Then he turns to several of the officers that were next to the podium, "Take the Batman into custody." At this, the crowd suddenly stops.

Whitley is sitting there, heartbroken by the chanting as hungry eyes from the people scan the room. Whitley starts to rise...

James offer his own wrists to the officer, "I'm Batman."

A beat. Whitley stares gob smacked.

Inside the penthouse, Glynda jaw-dropped.

She starts to leave the room, just as Klein walks in. Glynda sees him and approached him. Upset, she asks "Why is he letting James do this, Klein?"

Klein was just as shocked as her, "I-I don't know, miss. He went down to the press conference-" "And just stood by and let this happen?!" She interrupted him, pointing at the TV as they see James being arrested. Klein looks on, sadly. "Perhaps both Whitley and Mr. Ironwood believe that Batman stands for something more important than a terrorist's whims, Miss Goodwitch, even if everyone hates him for it."

He points to the TV, "That's the sacrifice he's making, to not be a hero. To be something more."

Glynda glares at the screen, "Well, you're right about one thing. Letting James take the fall is not heroic." She turns back and holds out an envelope. "You know Whitley best, Klein. Give this to him when the time is right."

Klein looks sadder, knowing what was inside. "How will I know?" Glynda smiles sadly at him, "It's not sealed." He takes the envelope, and Glynda gives him a peck on the cheek. She hugs him as she says "Goodbye, Klein." The man starts to tear up, but returns the hug with a soft "Goodbye, Glynda."

The two separate and Glynda grabs her keys and quickly leaves.

The screen switches to a cell in the MCU later that day, James sitting on one of the spare chairs. A Detective unlocks the cell and lets Glynda inside, then the person closes the door, leaving the two alone. James sees her and gets up, saying "I'm sorry. I didn't have time to talk this through with you."

Glynda shakes her head and looks worryingly at him, "I know what you're trying to do. Don't offer yourself as bait, James." James looks down and sighs. "They're transferring me to central. This is the Joker's chance, and when he attacks, Batman will come to take him down."

Glynda steps closer and hugs him. "No." she says, "It's too dangerous."

The Detective from before knocks on the door, signaling that her time was up. James lets go of her, and resolutely walks towards the door.

Outside, in the courtyard of the MCU; Bart, Blake and other detectives stare at James as he is led, shackled, to the waiting convoy. Bart begins clapping, and a handful join in, but most remain quiet, silently paying tribute to the brave man before them.

Glynda follows him to the back of one of the armored vans, trying to persuade him to rethink his decision. "I know that he's using you as bait, but he doesn't know if he can catch the Joker. He's failed so far."

James stops before he steps inside the back, "How do you know what he's thinking?" Glynda, not willing to reveal the secret, steers the conversation away. "I just do, okay? James, this isn't just about you. What about all the people counting on you to turn Vale around? Please, just tell everyone the truth-" James kisses her, to the hooting of the detectives and cops looking.

He pulls away, reaches into his pocket, and pulls out his lucky coin again. He shows her one side, "Heads, I go through with it."

Glynda, blushing from the recent kiss, glares at her idiot, "This is your life, you don't just leave something like this to chance, you idiot."

James winks, then tosses it at her. Glynda catches it and looks to see which side it landed on. Heads. He smiles at her as she looks back, and sincerely says "I don't." She looks back to the coin and turns it over. Her eyes widen when she sees that it's double-headed. She looks up, and watches as the doors close on his dorky smile.

She shakes her head, a bit amused by the trickery. "You make your own luck."

As SWAT teams file into the back of the convoy, one of officers, the acting commissioner, looks at the rows of personnel and says "We get this guy up to County, and he's their problem. The streets along your route will be cleared. This convoy stops for NO reason. Do you understand?" "Sir, Yes Sir!"

Inside one of the two armored vans, A SWAT with a shotgun climbs into the passenger seat. The guy pulls off his mask and adjusts his helmet before looking over at the driver, who's fully kitted out. He nods to the driver and says, "Hope you've got some moves."

Outside, in Tenth Avenue, Downtown, the convoy is seen going past a premade roadblock. Inside the back of the second van, the guard sitting across from James was staring at him in fascination. James just smiles at him.

The screen then cuts to an intersection, where an officer is holding up traffic. Just then, a truck pulls up and the officer waves his hands in the air as he moves to the driver's side. He gets to the door, and sitting in the driver's seat, with a typical trucker outfit with a cowboy hat, is Vernal.

She was looking towards the road, but she turns when she sees the cop coming up to the window. She looks at him as he says, "Look, miss, you gonna have to wait like everybody el-" Without warning, the Joker pops up from the passenger seat with a shotgun pointed to him, and immediately fires a shot off point blank, sending the cop flying.

Back to the convoy. Inside the lead patrol car, the cop behind the wheel slows down as he sees something burning in the intersection ahead. Overhead, a police bullhead is seen going over the convoy to check the issue and stops. There, blocking the road that the convoy needed to take, is a burning firetruck.

Back to the SWAT van, the driver narrows his eyes as the radio crackles. "All units be advised. Prepare to exit down Cheviot west and proceed north on lower 5th avenue." The SWAT riding shotgun looks to the driver in disbelief, "Lower 5th? We'll be like sitting ducks down there."

On the street, we see the convoy as it passes the firetruck and disappears down the exit ramp. Now in lower fifth avenue, the convoy rolls through the subterranean streets. As the convoy merges, a garbage truck is seen as it pulls up from the side and casually swipes the rear vehicles of the convoy off the road. It then drives faster and swipes another off. Inside the truck, we see Sage in the driver's seat.

Back to the armored car, the passenger SWAT grabbed his gun as he shouts to the driver "Get us out of here!"

The Driver puts the petal on the metal as the whole convoy starts to go faster. On the underground street, Sage's truck pushes hard on a third patrol car, ramming its rear bumper, and forcing it to the side and crashing into a civilian van.

Back to the SWAT van, the driver watches as the truck begins to fill his rear-view mirror. It then smashes into their rear bumper, the view briefly switching to James as he is jostled around from the impact. As the driver tries to keep them level, the other Swat picks up the radio. "We've got company back here, we need back up now!"

In the SWAT van in front of them, the driver nods and says to the team behind him "We got trouble, people." As he sees the garbage truck in his rearview, he told the team to get ready for action. Just then a large trailer smashes into the side of the van, smashing it through the concrete barriers and into the river.

The trailer struggles to right itself after that, the side of it having an image of a circus and is branded "LAUGHTER" on one side, but an "S" has been spray-painted at the front to spell "SLAUGHTER" with "HA, HA, HA" all over the other side.

The Joker's truck dodges between support columns and into the oncoming lane before finally stabilizing. It then pulls alongside the armored van. The driver looks over, and the cargo door on the truck slides open. Inside, the Joker is seen with several clowns and holding up a machine pistol. The driver locks up its brakes to keep them out of the field of fire, but Sage pushes it back forward as the Joker fires in their vague direction, bullets slamming into the side of the vehicle.

Inside the back of the van, the SWAT calmly ducks as James flinched heavily from the bullet indentations appearing close to their heads.

Back to the rear trailer of the truck, the Joker drops his pistol as one of his clowns, the monkey tail showing it to be Sun, hands him a shotgun. He immediately fires the thing at the van, even taking a knee to get a firmer stance as he continuously fires at them.

Back to James, the shells are making a larger indent, but the armor is still holding strong. James looks to his guard as he points to the wall behind him, "These things are built for that, right?" The guard nods and says, " Don't worry sir. The Joker would need to use something a lot tougher to get through the armored plating."

Back to the Joker, he drops his gun when it ran out of ammo, and a woman in a red dress and half mask hands him an RPG.

Back to the van, the SWAT passenger looks to see what the Joker was holding in stunned disbelief, "W-What is that? Is that a bazooka?!" The Joker then fires, but the angle was slightly off, and it flew ahead of the truck, and instead hit the back of the patrol car in front of them.

A third clown, one who was fatter than the others, handed Miltia another rocket, who hands it to her boss. He quickly reloads, then aims again and fires, but Vernal slightly swerves to avoid a car and he ends up missing again and hits the police car, again.

"Man, that driver must have the shittiest of luck." He remarks as he watches the car flips onto its side and the van was forced to slam past it. The others nodding their heads.

He then hears a weird humming sound ahead, so he turns to the front. There, racing towards them, is the Tumbler.

The Joker stares, smirking at the sight, as the Tumbler is on a collision course with the van. The driver, realizing what the man planned on doing, swerved to the side, allowing the Tumbler to pass by and plows straight into the garbage truck. The low-profile of the armored car caused the truck to ramp it, drive up and smash into the concrete ceiling, the whole top half of the front crumpling like a tin can on impact.

The Tumbler carries on though, dragging the remains of the truck for a couple feet before stopping and allowing what remained of Sage's truck to slide right off. It then backs up before it turns around to rejoin the pursuit.

The Joker looks back to the crash, a bit amused by what he did.

Sun looked at him, fear in his voice, "Is that him-?" The Joker interrupts, "Anyone could be driving that thing. Stay on James." He reassures his crew. The Joker reloads, lines up his RPG and prepares to fire one more time, sure that he wouldn't miss a third time.

Inside the Tumbler, Batman watches as the Joker prepares to fire. He pushes a few buttons and toggles the afterburner.

Back to the Joker, he steadies his aim and fires. We switch to Batman as he presses a button, and the Batmobile's afterburner activates as it quickly moves between the two vehicles and jumps, taking the hit from the RPG and explodes.

"Goddamn it, not again!" Joker yells as he ducks down with the rest.

The rear of the Batmobile explodes, spinning the flaming car away from the chase and continues to flip.

Inside the front of the van, the SWAT's flinch away from the explosion as the driver stops the van due to the dust from the explosion. In the back, James is thrown from his seat due to the shockwave. In the front seat of the trailer, Vernal takes a debris hit to the head and cries out as she swerves to the side.

Inside the trailer, the Joker cackles with amusement as everyone are tossed about like it was a carnival ride, as well as vindication that he managed to make Batman pay for making him miss again.

Back to the Tumbler, it continues to tumble as parts of the vehicle are tossed away from the wreck before finally stopping at a particularly strong column in a smoking heap. The front end was mostly intact, but the rear tires were scattered across the roadway.

Inside, Batman looks at the screens and sees the extent of the damage.

Seeing that it was hopeless to remain, he wrestles some controls, before his seat lowers into a lower section of the car.

Outside the wreck, a small crowd gathers around the wreck.

Back to the circus truck, the Joker jumps down from the trailer, still giggling like a kid. He looks back to where the Tumbler crashed, and smiles. "Heh, that's what you get, dork knight." The Joker then goes to the front and opens the door. There he sees Vernal slightly bleeding from a headwound but still alive.

"Excuse me, my dear, but I want to drive now." She nods her head and moves to the passenger seat. He jumps into the now vacant seat and before taking the wheel, he takes out some gauze and silently hands it over to her.

He then drives back onto the roadway.

It switches over to the SWAT van, now without any backup or other support. The driver starts to drive again, seeing the trailer was on the move again. He manages to pull ahead, but the trailer was in hot pursuit. In the passenger seat, the SWAT glances at the rear-view mirror, and slaps the dash in frustration before turning to his partner. "Let's get topside, we need that air support NOW!"

The driver nods and outside, the armored car pulls onto a ramp, heading up and out. The trailer follows close behind, its longer section smashing into the nearby column before moving forwards. The Joker was grinning as he drives, saying "I like this job, I like it!" With Vernal giggling along.

Back to the wreckage, people are staring at the smoking hunk of metal, a few even inching closer. Inside, Batman adjusts his position, then hits a button. In a voice that sounds familiar, the Tumbler in Penny's voice says "Warning, damage catastrophic. Initiate eject and self-destruct."

Arm guards grabs Batman's forearms as outside, one of the front tires begins to move. Armored plates begin to shift and explosive bolts fire all around the pod. Inside Batman reaches for two overhead levers and turns them sideways. Back outside, a pair of what looks like weapons emplacements appear on either side of the spinning wheel. He then reaches one final lever and flicks it.

Outside, the crowd jumps back as the panels in front of the wheel blows out and Batman emerges, hoisted up and out of the flaming car by the pod. Levering over the front wheel, the pod pushes the other front wheel to form a type of motorcycle. The new Bat-pod shoots forwards, bursting free as it quickly moves away from the remains.

Inside the Batmobile, Penny's voice says a final "Goodbye", and the whole thing detonates, the Tumbler dying in a massive fireball.

Batman's cape sucks together, forming a sort of tight pack over his shoulders, clear of the rear tire of the Bat-pod.

Cutting to inside of a taxi, on the lower street in the middle of traffic, the driver stares through his rear-view mirror, while cleaning his teeth before it spontaneously breaks as the Bat-pod tears past. He stares at the missing mirror, before the screen switches to the bat-pod as Batman accelerates, oblivious to the piles of cleaved wing mirrors as the bat-pod rushes through traffic, then crosses a busy intersection.

The Bat-pod cuts off the crowded lower level street, roaring over into the parking lanes.

Back to the chase, the armored car is racing down the street, where the bullhead sees them and dips low. The pilot of the craft looks at the chase happening below, and the snipers in the back cock their weapons in preparation. "We're back on point, and ready to give these bastards some of their own medicine." He says over the radio.

The SWAT in the passenger seat looks to their saviors, sighing in relief as he points to the craft "Oh yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Air calv."

Inside the truck, the Joker saw the vehicle and smirked.

He tries reach over and open the truck's gearbox while he was driving but Vernal, having by now finished bandaging her head and putting her hat back on, said "Don't worry boss, I got this", and opened the glovebox for him and took out his scroll.

The Joker pouted at her, "Aww, I wanted to see if I could do it myself~." Vernal just smirked at him.

He then shrugged and told her to call the others. After she did that, he takes the scroll and says, "Alright people, rack 'em up."

In a fire escape, a thug with blue hair and a clown mask loads up the same cable gun seen in the bank heist and lays prone on his stomach. In a second fire escape another woman, this time in a white dress and half mask loads her own cable gun while taking a knee as the Joker's voice could be heard in their scrolls "Rack 'em up, rack 'em up, rack 'em up." The two fires the cables, across the street at the same level as the helicopter, the wires pulling taut as the bullhead approaches unawares.

Inside a passenger car, two small children in the back are pretending to shoot at the cars with their hands, making explosion noises with their mouths. They then see ACTUAL explosions enveloping the cars, causing them to stop in confusion. As the explosions get closer, they watch as the Bat-pod speeds past.

Back to the chase the bullhead approached and catches onto the cables, tangling its frame in them, and veers off course. The passenger SWAT looks on in disbelief, "That's not good," he mutters.

The vehicle starts to spin in the air and smashes into a building tail-first before exiting without one of its engines. It continues to spin out of control before aiming down to the street below. The passenger glares, "Ok, that's NOT good!" The bullhead continues to spin as it lands and suddenly bursts into a fiery ball of death and barrels along the street towards the armored car.

Inside the truck, the Joker laughs loudly as he smacks the wheel in delight.

The Driver steers around the flaming wreckage and barely avoids smashing into it as the other one shields his face. In the back, James was tossed off his seat again. "Oh what, seriously?!"

In a narrow alley blocked with dumpsters, the Bat-pod tears its way down and Batman aims its cannons and fires at the dumpsters to make a path.

It then switches to outside a station, where the Bat-pod shoots through the glass front doors and barrels through. Batman is driving up the slope and shoots another glass door that leads into a mall. He is then seen driving through the hallway as commuters are screaming and diving out of the way.

The Bat-pod then exits the mall and speeds past the exit ramp and onto the upper street, before heading in another alley.

Back to the trailer, the Joker is smiling as he drives, giggling like he's having the time of his life. Just then, an explosion up ahead occurs, and the Bat-pod emerges from the alley in a cloud of fire, impossibly skidding sideways, before racing towards them.

Vernal looked a bit nervous, "Uh, Boss?" The Joker mutters to himself, smiling, "Now there's the Batman."

The Bat-pod moves pass the SWAT van and is heading straight for the trailer. The Joker sees this and grins, "Ooh, so you want to play? Ok big guy. Let's dance." before switching gears and gunning it. We cut to the Bat-pod as Batman flips a switch, revealing two harpoon hooks just above the cannons. As the two gets closer, Batman fires the harpoons at the truck. They impact low, hitting just below the bumper.

The Bat-pod lowers its profile closer to the ground and he veers to the side of the truck, then swerves underneath it and exits out the other. He then wraps the cables around several lamp posts, before approaching the end of the road, and the side of a building.

He slows down a bit, and somehow, as the front tire hits the wall it elevates the whole thing, allowing the body of the bike to spin around as it goes backwards, and land with him still right-side up as the bike completely halts.

Inside the truck, Vernal ducks to see what he did, then comes back up, beaming. "He missed!"

Outside, as the truck is still moving, the cables go taut, ripping one post after another from their foundations. The Joker looks at the rear-view mirror, and had just a moment to see his blunder, before the truck's front wheels screech to a halt, flipping it over on its back and slamming onto the pavement hard.

We cut to inside the SWAT van, where the driver stops the car, takes his partner's shotgun, and gets out with the guy shouting behind him, "What the hell are you doing? We can't stop now, we're like sitting ducks out here!"

The Batman drives forwards before the view switches over to the overturned truck.

There the Joker is seen crawling from the wreckage in some pain, laying on his back once he gets out. He tries to get up with a machine gun in his hands, but he stumbles over his feet and falls on his side, shooting off a few rounds into the pavement.

He gets back up though, hitting one of the wires as he does, before he starts walking. As he does this, Vernal was crawling out of the front, while Miltia was being helped by Sun and the fat clown as they start to get out of the wreck as well.

It briefly shows Batman speeding towards their position before switching back, showing Joker with a serious expression on his face as he mutters "Come on, come on, come on, come on!" he starts firing at oncoming traffic, hitting a few cars and causing them to swerve out of the way.

"Come on, come on, I want you to do, I want you to do it, come on!" he fires again, hitting another car as he stops in the middle of the road.

"Come on, come on, come on, I want you to do it, I want you to do it. Come on, hit me. Come on, hit me. Hit me!" Batman guns his bike and watches as the Joker holds out his arms, waiting for impact.

He screams.

"HIT ME!" Batman locks up the brakes, veering to the side and slamming its side into the ground as it skids. But he missed the Joker, the man turning his head as he sees him passing by.

The bike continues to skid across the road before slamming into the truck, the man's body flopping out of his bike and laying on the ground face-down.

The Joker sucks his teeth, then he reaches into his coat pocket and takes out a switch blade as he starts walking towards him.

Sun reaches Batman first, turning him right-side up to see his face. He is unconscious. It switches back to the Joker as he starts to skip along the street. Sun reaches for the Batman's neck to pull off the mask, but an electric shock from the suit throws him back.

The Joker immediately laughs as he twitches uncontrollably on the ground. Running the last few steps and jumping over Batman's prone form to stand over him, he pretends to twitch his body and making noises to imitate him being electrocuted, before going back to his target.

He kneels in front of Batman, his switchblade at the ready.

But before he could do much else, a shotgun is placed in the back of his head. It's the driver, holding the gun as he cocks a shell into the chamber.

The Joker was not amused, and groaned as he growled "Oh, come on!" Peeking behind him, he says "Look, could you please just give me a min-"

The driver pushes him off Batman, and throws him on the ground, taking off his helmet and mask to reveal Ozpin. "We got you, you son of a bitch." he growls.

The Joker smirks and drops the knife. He looks around to see his crew kneeling on the floor with the last two SWAT members with their guns at the ready.

Inside the armored car moments later, James looks up as the door swings open to reveal Oz smiling at him. James grins back, "Damn, Lieutenant, you really do like to play it close to the chest."

Oz nods, "We got him, James. It's over" James nods with respect and gratitude in his eyes. He gets up and leaves the van, and they shake hands.

Soon, a small army of cops are seen sealing off the roadway. Oz, seeing that everything was in order, gets in a squad car and pulls away, the rear window showing that the Joker was contained there. Reporters are clamoring to James, asking for an interview with the man as he's trying to leave the area.

"Sir," one of them asks, "what made you think that the Batman would be there to save you?" James smirked at the reporter, "I trusted him to do the right thing." "And what's that?" He puffs his chest out and proudly proclaims, "Saving my ass!"

Blake pushes through the pack, shoving reporters aside. "Alright people, let him be! He's been through enough." She creates a route for James to pass through and he takes it.

Nodding to her, James follows her to a squad car where Adam is seen in the driver's seat. James smiles at her as she opens the rear door. "Thanks, detective. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got a date with a pretty pissed off girlfriend." he says as he gets in.

Blake smiles as she nods, "I figured, counselor." She says and shuts the door, then signals Adam to pull out.

We cut to a holding cell in the MCU an hour later. There, the Joker is sitting patiently on a bench in the cage. His makeup has run, and his clothes were a mess, but his calm lends him an odd air of dignity. Cops smash their night sticks against the bars near the Joker's head, but the man does not flinch.

Miltia, Vernal, and Sun are in a separate cage, heckling the guards to leave their boss alone.

Some of the cops are off to the side, looking over his equipment but it only shows a rather disturbing number of knives.

Oz comes up and immediately reigns his men in, "Back away! All of you. I don't want anything for his mob lawyer to use, understand me? Handle this guy like he's made of glass." The guards stood down, a bit embarrassed at being caught. Port then walks in, impressed at the arrest and his handling the situation. He walks up to him and shakes his hand. "Back from the dead, Lieutenant?" he asks while smiling.

Oz nods as he looks determinately at him, "I couldn't chance my family's safety." He looks to the cage, with Port doing the same. They look back and Port asks, "So what do we got?"

Oz shakes his head and sighs in frustration. "Nothing. No matches on prints, DNA, dental. Clothing is custom, no labels. Nothing in his pockets but knives and lint. No name, no other alias. Nothing to prove that he exists to begin with."

Port places a hand over his shoulder, "Go home, Oz. Be with your family. The clown will keep 'till morning. Get some rest,"

he chuckles as he steps back, "you're going to need it. Tomorrow, you take the big job." Oz looks back with an off look. Port shakes his head and takes his hand for another shake, "You don't have any say in the matter," shouting louder for all to hear, "Commissioner Ozpin!" The cops in MCU start cheering and clapping for their new Commissioner.

Some of the cops stop when they hear another clap coming from within the cells. It was the Joker, clapping enthusiastically as he smiles proudly at the man.

We cut to outside Ozpin's home later, where Oz rings the bell. Salem answers it, looking depressed and dressed in a black dress, but stares in shock at the sight of her thought-to-be dead husband. Oz looks guiltily at his wife's appearance and goes to hug her, "I'm sorry, I couldn't tell you. I couldn't risk-" She slapped the crap out of him,

but he just took the punishment without a sound and hugs her, holding her tight as she sobs.

The sound draws the attention of their four children as they walked in the room to see what the matter was. They were all wearing little black dresses and were as sad as their mother was.

Once they saw who was holding their mommy, the youngest child, Circe, hesitantly calls out "Pappa?" The couple breaks the hug as Ozpin looks to his children. He smiles at them, and says "Hello sweethearts, I'm home." They begin to tear up, "PAPPA!" They shout as they rush to their daddy, enveloping him in a group hug.

Salem smiles at the sight, still crying but she soon regains her composure and quickly goes to join in on the celebration, her family complete once more.


	9. 9

Leaving the happy family and going back to the holding cells in the MCU, where the last of the Joker's crew are being processed. Vernal, Miltia, and Sun were in one cell, and the last one who was seen with the Joker was being led to a different one.

Without the mask, the audience sees that it's a she, with light skin and short blonde hair kept in a bob haircut, a beauty mark under her right eye, lipstick on her upper lip and purple nail polish on her fingernails. Since she is the last to be checked, she gets to wait in her own cell.

One of the detectives, Peach, turns to Bart and says "Look at these ugly freaks."

The chubby woman walks closer to the bars, clutching her stomach. "I don't feel good." She moans. Peach glares at the killer, "You're a cop killer. You're lucky to be feeling anything below the neck."

Alone in his cage and far from his crew, the Joker smirks at this.

We cut back to Oz's home, where we are in a child's room. There, Ozpin crouches by his oldest daughter's beside. He reaches out to touch Oma's cheek as she sleeps.

Her eyes slowly open, staring at her daddy as if she was still dreaming. "Did Batman save you, daddy?" she whispers. Oz looks at his daughter, and a little pride seeps in his voice, "Actually," he grins, "this time I saved him."

Suddenly his scroll starts ringing.

We go back to the MCU, where Oz is seen in a hallway pushing through a swarm of detectives that are crowded outside an observation room. When he enters, he already sees that Blake, Peach, and Bart are all there. He then looks through the glass, and everyone in the audience notices that it's the same one from when Watts had his turn.

The Joker can be seen, both through the glass as well as on a large monitor, just sitting there. Calm. Collect. Bored.

Oz glares at the clown's image, "Has he said anything, yet?" Blake shakes her head sadly. Oz leaves the room and pushes through a door into the interrogation room. The Joker, was sitting in near darkness, wrists handcuffed together, when Oz walks in.

He sits down on the chair opposite him. The Joker smiles friendly at him, "Evening, Commissioner." Ozpin glares harshly at him, "James Ironwood never made it home."

The Joker smirked, "Of course not."

Oz gritted his teeth, "What have you done with him?"

He laughs, "Me? I was right here." He raised his arms to show his bound wrists, then points to Oz with a raised eyebrow. "Who did you leave him with? Hmm, your people?" he grins, "Assuming, of course, that they are still your people not Jacques'..." He now looks seriously at Oz, "Does it depress you, Commissioner? To know just how alone you really are?" Ozpin can't help glancing at the mounted camera.

He continues to twist the knife, "Does it make you feel responsible for Jimmy's current predicament?" Oz takes a deep breath to calm himself down and banish his doubts.

"Where is he?"

The Joker looks to the side for a bit, before looking back. "What time is it?" Oz starts to snarl, "What difference does that make?" He shrugs, "Well, depending on the time, he might be in one spot." He gestures his hands to the left, smiles, "Or several." He then spreads them out as best he could to illustrate his point.

Oz sighs as he stands up, moves to the Joker, and undoes his handcuffs. "If we're going to play games," taking the cuffs with him as he walks away, "I'm going to need a cup of coffee."

The Joker chuckles at the predictability, "Aha, the good cop, bad cop routine?" he winks to Oz, and the man pauses, hand on the doorknob. He turns around, "Not exactly." He steps out, and a buzzing noise is heard, before the overhead lights suddenly comes on, showing a large shadow looming over him.

The Joker blinks in the harsh white light. WHAM! The Joker's face hits the table, before he is then forced to come back up, muttering "Ow". His vision clears up a bit, and he sees Batman sitting in front of him.

The Joker stares, at him with a slight glare, his vision still not the best. He then rubs his forehead with one hand as he critiques, "Never start with the head... victim gets fuzzy. Can't feel the next-" CRACK! Batman's fist smashes down on the Joker's other hand which was just innocently laying there.

The Joker just blinks at him, and says in a calm voice, "See?"

Batman glares at him, "You wanted me. So here I am." The Joker grins, "I wanted to see what you'd do." A grin, "And you didn't disappoint..." He then laughs, "You let five people die. And then, you let James take your place. Even to a guy like me, that's cold" He shakes his head in mock disappointment.

"Where's James?" Batman gets to the point. The Joker sighs and rest his head on a hand, "Those mob fools want you gone so that they can get back to the way things were." He smirks in amusement as he shakes his head, "But I know the truth, there's no going back. You've changed things. Forever." Batman looks confused, "Then why do you want to kill me?"

The Joker starts laughing loudly.

After a few seconds of this, he regains some of his composure back, "K-Kill you? I-I don't want to kill you~. What would I do without you? Go back to ripping off Mob dealers? No, no, God no! No, you..." He points to himself, "You. Complete. Me."

Batman sneers at him, "You're garbage who kills for money."

The Joker immediately points to the man, "Hey, don't talk like you're one of them, you're not!... Even if you'd like to be." He leans forward and stares deeply into his eyes, "You see to them you're just a freak... like me."

He gestures to the cops that were listening to the conversation, "They need you right now, they're desperate." He looks at Batman with something approaching pity.

He shakes his head as he continues, "But as soon as they don't... they'll cast you out. Like a leper." The Joker looks into his eyes, searching, wondering if he is close to figuring out the 'truth'. The Joker points to the glass again, "All their morals, their little code... it's a bad joke."

He gestures something being dropped with his hand, "Dropped at the first sign of trouble." He glares at Batman "They're only as good as the world allows them to be. You'll see... when the chips are down, these 'civilized' people? They'll eat each other."

He grins and leans back, "See, I'm not a monster," He spreads his arms wide, "I'm just ahead of the curve." Batman suddenly grabs the Joker by the collar and pulls him upright.

"Where's James?" he growls. The Joker smiles as he chokes out, "You have these rules, and you think they'll save you." Batman then pushes Joker into a section of the wall that wasn't just glass.

In the Observation room, Peach is moving for the door, but Oz stops her. He points to the scene, "He's in control." Back in the interrogation room, Batman snarls out "I have one rule." The Joker smirks at his admittance, "Then that's the one you'll have to break, to know the 'truth'." Batman glares, "Which is?"

The Joker grins, "That the only sensible way to live in this world, is without rules." His grin widens, "And tonight, you're going to break your one rule..." Batman leans closer to the Joker. "I'm considering it." The Joker shakes his head as best he could, "Well, there's just a few minutes left, so you'll just have to play my little game if you want to save one of them." he says the last bit with relish.

Batman's grip slackens, "Them?" he whispers. The Joker look at him with a shit-eating grin, "You know, for a while there. I thought you really were James, the way you threw yourself after her." He hints at the other person.

Batman, in his anger tosses the Joker into the metal table as he laughs and rips off the bolted-down chair before moving towards the door.

In the observation room, Oz races for the door, but Batman reaches it first and jams the chair under the doorknob.

The Joker, a mad grin on his face, laughs at Batman, grinning as he says "Look at you go." Batman starts to stalk back to the clown.

The Joker gets up off the table, cracking his back with a groan, and wags a finger at him, "Does Jimmy know about you and his-?" but Batman interrupts him by grabbing his head and smashing it into the two-way mirror, with the glass cracking in a massive spiderweb from the impact.

The Joker then slides to the floor as Batman stands over him like a man possessed, "WHERE ARE THEY?!" He yells. The Joker looks calmly at him, as though the severe blow to the head didn't bother him at all, "Killing is making a choice..." Batman punches the Joker across the face, hard. "WHERE ARE THEY?!" he shouts louder, but the Joker is just feeding off Batman's anger. Still in a calm demeaner, he says "You choose one life or the other." He says as Batman pants softly, "Your friend, the district attorney." He grins, "Or his blushing bride-to-be." He starts to laugh, but Batman punches the Joker hard again.

But the Joker laughs even harder. "Y-You have nothing! Nothing to threaten me with. Nothing to do with all your strength!"

Batman grabs him by the collar, but Joker shakes his head. "Oh, don't worry, I'm going to tell you where they are. Both of them, and that's the point," He grins at him, "you'll have to choose."

The Batman stares at the Joker in anger, waiting for the information. "He's at 250, 52nd Boulevard. And she's on avenue X at Cicero."

Batman drops him and immediately heads out. Batman races past Oz as he asks "Which one are you-" "Glynda!" Batman shouts as he exits the building.

Outside, several cops look on as Batman climbs onto the Bat-pod and tears off. In the streets, Batman swerves into oncoming traffic, leaving chaos in his wake. Back at the MCU, Oz orders his men to head to 52nd Boulevard as they scramble into their cars, Blake following him and entering a separate car.

We cut to inside a darkened apartment basement, where James is seen unconscious and bound to a chair. A voice could then be heard, "Can anyone hear me?" James starts to open his eyes. "Hello?!"

James shakes his head and gets rid of his drowsiness. "Glynda?" He says as he looks around, just now noticing the dozens of metal barrels surrounding him. "Glynda, is that you?"

She is heard again, a soft sobbing echoing in her voice, "James! You're okay. I thought..." The screen switches to one of the barrels, where a lit-up scroll could be seen. "It's OK, Glynda." He tries to reassure her, "Everything's going to be just fine." He looks around, hoping to see something that would help, but all he sees are more metal barrels, several of which are hooked up to a car battery, with a timer counting down: five minutes.

Back in the MCU, The Joker is sitting on the space that he was last in, smiling in content. Near him is Bart guarding the door, his gaze pointed forwards. the Joker then sighs and starts muttering "I want my scroll call. I want it." He looks to Bart, "I want my scroll call."

Bart looks at him and glares, "That's nice." before looking forwards again.

He smirks, "How many of your friends have I killed?"

Bart sighs, before looking back. "I'm a twenty-year man. And I can tell the difference between punks who need a little lesson in manners, and the freaks like you who would just enjoy it." He glares fiercely at him as he quietly says "And you killed six of my friends." Joker looks at him and mouths "Six?" in mock surprise.

In one of the holding cells, the woman shuffles to the bars, where a cop was standing guard. She leans over the bars and in agony, begs, "Please. My insides hurt." The cop was indifferent to the woman's apparent pain and dismisses her. "I don't care, now step away from the bars."

She looks at him and smiles through the pain, "The boss said he would make the voices go away. He said he would go inside and replace them with bright lights. Like Christmas." She starts wheezing as she laughs.

The cop shakes his head and glares at her, "You're crazy. Back off!" The woman starts to gurgle and soon collapses on the floor, spasming as she did so. The cop grabs his radio and moves to the door, "Medic to the holding cells, hurry up!"

He turns to another cop and points to the door, "Come on, get the door open." He walks inside, where he sees Sun, Miltia, and Vernal peeking over the bars of their own cell, smirking at the scene.

He points to them, "You guys back off!" He was a bit unnerved when they started grinning as they slowly stepped back and headed to the other side of their cell.

We cut to inside a warehouse, where we see Glynda bound to a chair. Surrounding her are barrels identical to the ones with James. His voice is heard over an identical scroll, "Can you move your chair?" Glynda tries, but the chair's bolted down, "No. Listen James, we don't have much time. They said only one of us was going to make it, and that they'd let our friends choose..."

Back to the apartment, James is taking in her words, panting as he listens. He looks around as he tries to calm her down, desperate to find something that could free him. "It's gonna be fine, they're coming for you I promise." Glynda closed her eyes as she shook her head, her tears flowing freely, "I know. Listen to me, let me help. Just talk me through what's happening with you."

We cut back to James as he begins dragging his chair, inching closer to the barrels. "Can you find anything? Anything to cut?" He struggles to move, "I'm trying" he strains.

We cut to Glynda as she listens to his grunts. "Ok, what's hap- James?"

James repeatedly clangs his chair with a barrel as he tries to find a leverage to escape. However, his momentum caused the barrel to topple, taking him with it.

Glynda's voice is heard over the scroll, "James, what's happening?" It cuts to the barrel's lid where the cap was knocked off and diesel fuel is seen spilling out, before cutting back to James laying sideways with one side of his face pressed against the bare floor, watching the open barrel spew the fuel around him. All he could so was spit out the fuel so that he doesn't swallow any.

We cut back to the interrogation room. The Joker is still sitting by the broken glass as he smiles at nothing in particular. He asks, "You know why I prefer using a knife, Detective?" Bart just looks ahead, trying to ignore him.

"Because guns are too quick. You don't get to savor all the, little emotions." He moves his fingers in front of him to demonstrate his point before looking at his guard. "You, you see. In their last moments, people reveal who they really are." Bart breaths deeply in an attempt to reign in his anger. It isn't working.

He looks to the Joker as the madman continues, "So, in a way, I knew your friends better than you ever did." He smiles tauntingly at him, "Would you like to know which of them were cowards?"

Bart smiles and takes off his coat.

Inside the holding pins, two medics and a few cops have pulled the twitching woman out of her cell and are kneeling over her. One of the medics opens up the lady's jacket and starts to feel around her chest professionally, noticing a spiderweb tattoo on her left shoulder, but stops when she felt something in the woman's stomach region. She pulls up her shirt slowly, and the screen reveals that her belly has a large incision, which has been closed with crude looking stiches.

The medic stutters a bit at the half-ass surgery as she struggles to keep her food in. "S-She's got some kind of... contusion..." A rectangular shape is visible under the skin above her navel.

We cut back to Bart as he rolls up sleeves, "I know you're going to enjoy this." The Joker cracks his neck in preparation. "I'm going to have to enjoy it, even more." He then reaches for the mad clown.

In Vale's streets, the Bat-pod is skidding sideways, wheels flipping as the gyro keeps Batman upright on the tumbling bike as it continues to haul ass past traffic and passing cars.

Cutting back to the MCU. Inside the detective's room, several people were walking around as Peach was standing over her desk, looking over some report before looking up. Her eyes widen and grits her teeth as she and the other detectives pulled out their guns.

The screen shifts and everyone sees Bart shuffling out into the room, a piece of broken glass held to his throat by the Joker, with more cops entering behind them with their weapons drawn.

"Drop the weapon now!" Peach shouts, trying to get a clear shot but the Joker wasn't making it easy, making the two shifts back and forth to paint a smaller target.

Bart struggles in his grasp and growls out "This is my own damn fault. Just shoot him!" The cops and detectives were shouting for the Joker to let him go. "Let him go now!" Peach yells at him, "Drop the weapon and let him go now!"

Joker raised an eyebrow as he tilts his head to the side, "What? I'm sorry?" Peach grounds her teeth as asks, "What do you want?!" The Joker stops all movement, and looks directly at Peach and says in a dead serious tone...

"I just want my scroll call."

Peach glances to one of the cops beside her, confused at the request.

Back to the apartment, James is almost half submerged in diesel fuel. Glynda's voice is heard as he continues to spit out the fuel, "James, what's happening? Are you ok?" She sounds desperate. "Just talk to me for one second, please!" It shows the counter, it has less than a minute left.

The detectives look at each other, before Peach looks back and raises a hand in an effort to calm the Joker down from slicing her friend's neck, "Alright, just calm down." The Joker reaches with his free hand towards her and makes a grabbing motion. Peach reaches inside her jacket and pulls out her scroll. She then tosses it to the Joker, who catches it and immediately begins to dial, shushing Bart as he starts to struggle again. Smiling while he does it.

He clicks send.

Back to the holding area, the lady finally stops twitching, unconscious. The Medic meanwhile gingerly presses around the rectangle, before it stars to illuminate, a soft blue light visible through the skin as a soft dialing tone was soon heard.

The cops and medics flinch back, surprised by what was inside the woman's body. One of the cops asked in disgust, "Is that a... scroll?" The view retreats back to show the entire room, just as the bomb inside the woman ignites, engulfing both the crowd and the room, shattering the windows as it expands.

Cutting back to the Joker, he had just released Bart when the explosion entered the room. The flames sweeping through the area and all the cops dropped to the floor, unconscious. He however, remained standing. Outside, the explosion rips through the building and destroys many of the windows.

Back inside, we see Joker standing with the remains of documents scattered in the wind. He looks around at the destruction he caused.

Then he looks directly at the screen, and smirks tauntingly at the audience.

In the streets, Oz orders his driver to mount the curve so to avoid the traffic. The guy nodded and immediately swerves to drive on the sidewalk, the people there scattering. Meanwhile, outside a building, the Bat-pod comes to a stop, and Batman jumps off the bike and runs to the entrance.

We cut to Glynda, where she is crying as she says "James, just in case... I want you to know something, ok?" James' voice could be heard choking out, "Don't talk like that, Glynda. They're coming for you, just hang on!" his emotions overwhelming him.

Glynda nods as she chokes out, "I know, but I don't want them to..."

Outside, Batman brakes the locks and tears the door off its hinges. With Oz, his convoy stops before a large building.

Back to Glynda, she looks at the timer. Ten seconds left. She shakes her head and calls out "I don't want to live without you, and I do have an answer for you. My answer is yes!"

Batman is seen sprinting down the hall, and stops at a door, before kicking it open. The door gives, and Batman looks inside...

To see James' prone form.

The man looks up in horror, shouting "NO! Not me! Why did you come for me?!" Batman stares at James in horror. The Joker lied. The counter hits 5 seconds.

Outside a building, Oz arrive, and the cops immediately got out and ran to the building.

Batman goes to James, releases him from his binds and hauls him away, with the man fighting desperately to stay. "GLYNDA! GLYNDA!" He shouts as he struggles.

Cutting to Glynda, she puts on a brave face, accepting her fate. "James? James, it's okay..." she said as she heard James calling to her. Outside, Oz runs towards the entrance.

The counter ran out.

Glynda, in a calm voice, says "I love-" an explosion consumes her.

Outside, the blast hurls Oz backwards onto the hood of his car, and the entire warehouse is engulfed in an enormous explosion. He gets up and sees the warehouse in an inferno, but he heads for it anyway. Five of his men and Blake had to restrain him as the screen closes in on his tearful face, showing the devastation he felt at failing to save James.

We see Batman wrap his cape around James, the man still shouting her name, and hurls them both through the door. "GLYNDA! NO!" The building behind them erupts in an explosion like the one that killed Glynda.

The explosion hits them, and the fireball ignites the fuel soaking James' left side. He starts burning as the two falls to the ground from the shockwave, screaming in pain.

All sound coming from the screen turns silent as Batman immediately tries to put out the fire, rolling the screaming man on the wet pavement. The screen focuses on James's form, showing how the fire was eating away at half his face before Batman's cape covers the screen.

Back in the now burning remains of the MCU, the Joker was skulking about towards the holding cells when he heard people coughing. He steps inside, noticing the small crater from where several burnt corpses lay, and saw that his crew were in one of the cells, a bit ashy, but alright.

He was walking past them and to another section when they noticed him. "BOSS!" Sun yelled as Miltia and Vernal were gazing at him with joy. He smirked at them as he continued on. The Joker was on a mission after all.

He walks to the bars of a different cell and grins. He noticed one of the cops lying next to him on the ground, dead, but with a pair of keys attached to his belt. He takes them and jingles them in front of the cell door.

"Hello there." he says as he starts to unlock the cage. In his cell, terrified and clutching the bars farthest away from the door, was Watts.

In front of one of the burning buildings, James is being wheeled into an ambulance, bandages covering most his face, his one visible eye staring blankly as firefighters are working hard to contain the flames.

In the other, another crew of firefighters are putting out the flames as Oz watches the fire, debris blowing across the asphalt. He notices something on the ground. He picks up two pieces of debris, his eyes widen. What he's holding are singed joker cards with a photo of Watts photoshopped in place of the joker's face.

Just then, Blake approaches him. "Just got off the line. James' alive, Oz... Just." She pauses and sighs, "But back at the MCU... the Joker's gone."

Ozpin stops staring at the cards, and looks off to the side, "With Watts?" Blake nods. "The Joker planned to be caught." He looks at Blake as his teeth grind together, they played right into his hands. "He wanted me to lock him up in MCU."

In the streets of Vale, two squad cars are blazing down the street erratically in the dawn light. The sounds are again muted, only the sirens could be heard. In the first car, Vernal was driving with Miltia in the passenger seat. Both looking rather upset for just surviving an explosion so close to them and now successfully escaped with their prize.

Behind Vernal, the Joker sticks his head out the window like a dog, feeling the wind, before taking out his scroll and making a call, no sound escapes as he starts taking to the person on the other line, but the ladies did seem to look upset.

We cut to the penthouse's kitchen, where Klein is sitting at a table, opening the letter from Glynda and starts to read its content. Her voice could be heard off camera, "Dear Whitley, I need to explain..."

We cut to a smoldering building. Water. Smoldering blackness. The fire crews are extinguishing the last flames of the devastated building, soot and blackened wood are all that remain.

A fireman nudges his colleague, pointing to something in the middle of the devastation... "I need to be honest and clear. I'm going to marry James Ironwood..." Batman is there, standing like a statue amidst the charred ruins.

Inside a hospital's intensive care unit, James is lowered gently onto a table, his eye now shut in exhaustion as surgeons surround him. "I love him, I want to spend the rest of my life with him..." Cutting back to Klein as he looks on sadly, "When I told you that if Vale no longer needed Batman we could be together. I meant it..." Switching over to Batman, he crouches down and picks something up from the wreckage. It was James' lucky coin. One side blackened and scarred, he turns it over and sees the other side pristine.

He gazes at it in remorse, silently praying for forgiveness as he closes his fist over the coin. Over at the remains of the MCU, Ozpin surveys the wreckage, all the bodies. He drops to his knees in anguish.

Cutting back to Klein as he places a hand over his trembling lips, "But now I'm sure the day won't come when you no longer need Batman. I hope it does, and if it does I will be there..."

We cut to a hospital room where James is resting on the bed, heavily bandaged, and hooked up to various machines. Batman is standing at the foot of his bed, watching. "...but as your friend. I'm sorry to let you down..." He then reaches over to the small table next to him and places his coin on it, right-side up. "I'm sorry, James." He whispers regretfully, tears flowing down his cowl.

Back to Klein, he stops and folds the letter back in its envelope. "...If you lose your faith in me, please keep your faith in people. Love, now and always, Glynda." With tears now in his eyes, he places it on the breakfast tray next to him.

He then picks up the tray and starts to move through the silent space, stepping past the cowl and gauntlets lying on the cold marble floor. He approaches Whitley, who is half-undressed, slumping in a chair watching Vale. "I prepared a little breakfast, sir." Nothing. Klein sets down the tray, the envelope propped against the silver teapot. He sighs, "Very well." and begins to leave him in peace.

"Klein?" Whitley whispered. Klein stops and goes back to his side, "Yes, Master Whitley?" Whitley turns, a desperate look in his eye as he struggles not letting anymore tears fall. "Did I bring this on us? On her?" He stares back to the city when it became clear that he lost the struggle, "I thought I would inspire good, not madness."

Klein reaches forward and places a hand on his shoulder, "You have inspired good."

Whitley looks back. "But you spat in the face of Vale's criminals. Didn't you think there might be casualties? Things are always going to get worse before they got better."

Whitley is starting to break down, "But Glynda, Klein..." Klein went to hug him, "Glynda believed in what you stood for. What we stand for." Whitley looks up at Klein.

Klein then breaks the hug and goes over to pick up the cowl. "Vale needs you." he said, looking at the cowl. Whitley shook his head and stares out the window again, "Vale needs its true hero. And I let that murderous psychopath blow him half to hell."

"Which is why for now, they'll have to make do with you." Klein says, handing him the cowl. Whitley looks at him as he takes the cowl and stares at it in sadness. "She was going to wait for me. James doesn't know. He can never know..."

Klein gulps and glances at the envelope. He immediately takes it off the tray. Whitley saw what he was doing and asked "What's that?" Klein smiles reassuringly at him and answered "It can wait." He then puts the envelope in his pocket. Whitley stares intently at the mask, "That bandit, in the forest of Wind Path... Did you ever catch him?" Klein nods. "How?" He answers uneasily, "We burned the forest down."

Meanwhile, in downtown Vale, a national guard bullhead roars over Vale General Hospital. Inside one of its room, James continues to lay, bandaged and sedated. He suddenly wakes up, coming up for air. He looks around his surroundings, remembering about the explosion and desperately hoping to find any sign that his love was ok.

He soon spots something shiny on the table, his coin. He fumbles for it, and takes it in his hand, marveling at its shiny face. Remembering. It cuts to Glynda catching the coin, back when he got arrested and was heading inside one of the SWAT vans. James smiles at the memory, thinking that she was the one who left it for him.

He turns the coin over. The other side is blackened and scarred. He stares at the scarred face, his eye growing wide with despair. Before he starts to scream, and in an uncontrolled outburst of anger rips his bandages off as he starts to move his limbs about in his rage.

In the penthouse, an hour later, Klein comes up to Whitley and points him to the TV. "You need to see this." On screen is Lisa, in her studio, as she addresses the camera. "...he's a credible source, a lawyer for a prestigious consultancy. He says he's waited as long as he can for the Batman to do the right thing..." The shot cuts to Scarlet, who nods at the camera. "Now he's taking matters into his own hands. We'll be live at five with the true identity of the Batman, stay with us..."

Cutting back to the hospital room, Ozpin enters. He sees James staring off to one side, looking normal. He lowers his head and closed his eyes in remorse before opening them again and heading towards the bedridden man. "I'm sorry about Glynda." James says nothing.

"The Doctors, say you're in agonizing pain but you won't accept any medication. That you're refusing skin grafts-" James interrupts in a calm voice, "Do you remember, the name you all had for me, when I was at Internal Affairs?" he asks, "What was it, Oz?"

Oz glances to the side as he shakes his head, "James, I don't..."

"Say it." But Oz still refuses to say. "SAY IT!" James' angry shout made Oz and the audience flinch/jump. He looks away, ashamed. In a small voice he says "Two-face. James two-face." James turns to face Oz, but the view focuses on Oz as he looks on, horrified at the extent of his injuries.

"And why should I hide, who I am?" Oz, guilty over what happened, looks down as he says "I... I know you tried to warn me. I'm sorry." The view focuses back to the two of them as James looks off to the side again. "We know Adam picked you up, was he working for them?"

James says nothing, "Do you know who picked up Glynda?" Again, nothing. "James, I need to know which of my men I can trust." James glances at Oz with his eye, cold. "Why would you listen to me now?" Oz looks at him, "I'm sorry, James." James looks to Oz, and this time the view focuses on him, and what the audience saw will haunt them for a good long while.

The left side of James' face is destroyed. What skin is left is blackened and shriveled, molars are visible, and the eye is but a ball and socket now.

"No." he growls at him as he glares with his good eye, "No you're not. Not yet." Oz takes one last look at James, then leaves.

In the corridor, Ozpin steps out. There he spots someone to the side. He turns around and sees Jacques with a walking cane.

Oz stares hard at him, and the man shifts to the side awkwardly. He looks regretful. "This craziness. It's too much." He shakes his head, hating himself for allow it to go so far.

Oz snorts as he walks past him, "You should have thought of that before you let the clown out of the box." Jacques stares ahead as Oz goes past him. "You want him?" He stops, as did the heroes in the audience, and turns his head back. "I can tell you where he'll be this afternoon."

In the docks, near an abandoned shipping container, a convoy of vehicles arriving. It shows Roman getting out of an SUV, joined by a few guards, another SUV with more men and his dogs. Lastly a Harley-model motorcycle ridden by Neo and a new girl that Roman recently hired named Emerald Sustrai colored pink and brown with white highlights, like Neo's hair.

They look at the rusted hulk, before Roman looks back and raises an eyebrow at his diminutive subordinate. "Hey Neo, what's with the new look?"

The young woman in question looks at her outfit. It consists of a brown jacket that ends just below her shoulders and above her chest and is pink on the inside, two brown belt shoulder straps, and a white vest with matching gloves, belt, pants and heeled shoes. Her hair is also more noticeably thicker than before with shorter bangs.

She looks back and shrugs. Roman then looks to what she's holding, "And the umbrella?" She glares at him, earning wide eyes from the thieving duo, and opens it up, showing an elaborately decorated lace fabric with multiple colors. Mostly pink and white in the middle and red and brown at the edges. It has a curved handle, with the other end having a small hole in the middle. "It's a parasol, you idiot." She says.

Roman holds his hands in surrender, not willing to incur her wrath, and motions everyone to head up the gangplank. Inside the decrepit ship, they walk into a huge hold. In the middle, a MOUNTAIN of lien, stacked neatly and at least thirty feet high. Surrounding it are Sun, the twins, Sage which indicates that he managed to survive his trip to the tunnel's ceiling a few days ago, Vernal, and other masked clowns.

Standing on top is the Joker, and at his feet, bound and gagged, is Watts.

Roman laughs. "Not as crazy as you look, heh!" The Joker grins "I told you, I'm a man of my word." and jumps from the top, sliding down the money pile like it was a slide. He reaches the end and spreads his arms out like he was expecting an applause.

He looks around, and raised an eyebrow, "Where's the prick?" Roman shrugs and pulls out a cigar, lighting it as he did so. "Hey, more for us, man."

We cut briefly to the garage of the MCU, one of the few places that wasn't damaged in the explosion. There, Oz and his men are gearing up to take down the Joker. Once he finishes, he looks to his men and orders "All tactical units will converge on the location in 20 minutes. I want auxiliary units to cover all possible getaway routes."

Cutting back to Joker, we see him continuously throwing wads of lien at Watts' face, most connecting.

Roman smirks at the acts of this man-child. "So. What're you gonna do with all your money, Mr. Joker?" The Joker looks back from his fun and looks to Sage while nonchalantly taking out a pistol.

He then looks at Roman with a smile, "You see, I'm a guy of simple tastes." he gestures his hands forward, "I enjoy things like... dynamite, and gunpowder..." Roman nods, showing that he was following along.

"And, Gasoline!" Sage steps forward at the signal and, lifting a container of fuel, turn the container over and starts splashing its contents all over the money.

Roman, furious, steps forwards, but the Joker turns and raises his gun to his face. "Ah, ah, ah." Most of Roman's bodyguards raise their weapons, and the Joker's crew does the same.

The Joker doesn't notice, or just doesn't care, and looks to the progress that Sage is doing. Then he goes to stand in front of Roman, "And you know the thing that they have in common?" he leans close to his face, "They're cheap."

Back to the studio, Scarlet is sitting down with a confident air while Lisa in front of him, taking calls. One caller is heard, saying "I wanna how much they're gonna pay you to say who Batman really is." Scarlet shakes his head and says "That's simply not why I'm doing this."

In the MCU, Ozpin is heard issuing more orders when Bart, with a bandage over his neck from when he had a shard of glass pressed against it, turns up the TV. His eyes widen and he turns back to the group, "Hey, Oz, you better take a look at this!"

Lisa's voice was heard, "let's take the next caller." A second caller's offscreen voice says "James Ironwood didn't want us to give in to this maniac. You think you know better than him?" We break to the penthouse, where Whitley and Klein are staring intently at the screen. Lisa looks to Scarlet, "Guy's got a point, James didn't want Batman to give himself up, is this really the right thing to do?"

The man shakes his head sadly, "If we could talk to James right now, he might feel differently Lisa." Lisa turns to the camera, "And we all wish him a speedy recovery. Because God knows, we need him now."

Cutting back to Joker, Roman was staring at him in disbelief, "You said you were a man of your word." he says over the cigar in his mouth. The Joker nods at the words, "Oh, I am."

He reaches up and plucks the cigar from the Roman's lips. He then turns towards the pile as he blows on the embers to keep them hot. He turns his head to look at Roman, "I'm only burning my half." The Joker then tosses the cigar at the pile and the whole thing bursts into flames.

Roman watches the money catch fire, powerless to do anything to save it.

The Joker sees this and shakes his head in disappointment. "All you care about is money. This city deserves a better class of criminal, and I'm going to give it to them." He jabs his gun to Roman's chest then points behind him with it. "Tell your men they work for me now." He points to himself with the gun, "This is my city."

Roman snarls at him, "They won't work for a freak." Joker imitates Roman and whispers "freak" before taking out a switchblade and tossing it behind the man. "Why don't we cut you up and feed you to your dogs? Hm?" Emerald and Neo suddenly rushes forward and grabs each of Roman's arms. Pulling him away, Neo is shown holding the knife that Joker threw against his neck.

"And then we'll see how loyal a hungry dog is." The bogs start barking as Roman was pulled closer to them. In the background, it shows Roman's bodyguards dropping their weapons in surrender while Sun grabs the guns and Sage hands them clown masks.

As the dogs start ripping Roman to shreds, Joker reaches into his pocket, "It's not about money..." He pulls out his scroll "...It's about sending a message." The Joker turns to watch the towering flames, the muffled screams of Watts being vaguely heard. Joker starts dialing up a number, "Everything Burns."

Before he pressed the dial key though, he sees his crew approach him, with the addition of Emerald and Neo. He grins at the two of them. Turning to the former, grinning all the while, "You got the others?" Emerald smiles lovingly at him, smiling as she nods, "Yes."

He nodded and turns to the latter, "And you? You like the present I gave you?" Neo grinned and held onto her parasol in content. Rubbing her cheek against it, she says "I love it, it's so soft and warm~." Walking closer to the man, she places a hand to his chest as she leans closer, much to the ladies' glares, and smiling sensually.

She hugs him and tiptoes up to peck his lips. She then tilts her head forward to whisper in his ear, "Come on, Mistah J, don't you wanna rev up your 'Harley'? Vroom, vroom~."

Joker shivered, a pleasant chill running down his spine. His reaction didn't go unnoticed though, as the guys started to back away slowly and the women were glaring jealously at the ice-cream colored midget for selfishly keeping his attention all to herself.

Sun cleared his throat nervously, "Uh, boss?" Joker looked to his number one guy with a raised eyebrow as Neo glared daggers at him. "T-The call?" He points to the scroll.

Joker's eyes widen and he grins. "Ah, of course. Thank you Sun." He nods, "anytime, Boss." He hits send.

We cut back to the MCU, where over the TV Lisa asks "So, who is this?" The Joker's voice is then heard, "I had a vision. Of a world without Batman." It cuts to a focused shot of Oz as he watches closely at the TV. "The mob ground out a little profit and the police tried to shut them down, one block at a time."

Cutting to the penthouse, Whitley and Klein are doing the same. "And it was so... boring. I've had a change of heart." A closeup of Whitley's glaring face. "I don't want Mr. David spoiling everything, but why should I have all the fun?" It cuts to inside the studio as Scarlet looks around, twitching. Sweating as the Joker's voice is heard over the speakers. "Let's give someone else a chance. If Scarlet David isn't dead in sixty minutes, then I blow up a hospital." His eyes widen at that last part.

"Of course, you could always just kill yourself, Mr. David. But that would be the noble thing to do, and let's face it: you're a lawyer." The line rings off and Lisa looks on, speechless.

Oz turns to the cops. "I want you to call in every officer. Tell them to head to their nearest hospital and start evac and search. Call the transit authority, school board, prisons. Get every available transport bullhead down to a hospital. The priority, is Vale General! Wheel everybody out of that place right now!" The cops rush off to do their jobs.

He then points to three cops and orders them to follow him. One of the cops asks "Where are we going, sir?" Oz point to the TV, where on screen Scarlet is like a deer in the headlights. "To get David."

Back in the penthouse, Whitley moves to the elevator. "I need you plugged in, checking Ozpin's men and their families." Whitley requests Klein. He looks determinedly at his back as he asks "Looking for?" Whitley steps inside the elevator and turns around to press the floor button, "Hospital admissions." Klein nods, "Will you be taking the Bat-pod, sir?"

Whitley looks at him with a smirk, "In the middle of the day? Not very subtle, Klein."

Klein nods and says "The Lamborghini then." He watches his charge go and sighs while muttering to himself, "Much more subtle."

Outside, in the streets, a rather cool-looking car is seen tearing through downtown.

The scene changes to inside a large hospital, where many people are trying to evacuate. Patients and staff are running around, with cops and traffic wardens trying to manage the evacuation. Mothers are holding onto their children and newborns; doctors and nurses are wheeling out patients and paraplegics as fast as they could.

One of the nurses, an adult Ruby Rose, notices the two cops stationed outside Ironwood's room looking around, unsure of what they should do.

Ruby calls over to them, "Guys, are you going to help or what?!" One of the cops, Lie Ren, offers to go with her while ordering his partner, Nora Valkyrie, to stay at her post.

We cut to the television studio, where Ozpin and his men are escorting Scarlet out of the elevator, with Lisa and her camera crew close behind. As they approach the glass doors, Oz looks out to see an angry crowd outside the glass doors.

Lisa also sees this and turns to him, "Commissioner?! Do you really think someone would try to kill-" before she could finish, Ozpin, spotting an old man raising a pistol, throws Scarlet to the ground as shots shattered the laminated glass of the lobby. The crowd disperses in all directions as Oz tells his men "Get the cars around back!" He then hauls his charge to the nearby stairwell.

It cuts to Whitley's Lamborghini as he slows past the chaos outside the station. He then says, "I saw O'Brien and Richards..." Cut to the Bat-Bunker, Klein is typing commands at the computer station. He shakes his head and says, "Nothing on them. No immediate family members admitted to a Vale hospital..."

Cutting back to the station's stairwell, Ozpin is pulling the shaken Scarlet down the stairs. Scarlet says "They're trying to kill me." The tone of his voice giving proof as to how shocked he was. The two soon exits into a parking lot, and head to a nearby police van.

Inside the van, Oz throws him in the back. Smiling, Oz says "Well who knows? Maybe Batman will save you." The van starts to peel out and heads towards the streets.

Outside the hospital, cops are loading patients onto large airships. A TV bullhead suddenly lands, and Lisa and her camera crew jump out.

Ren is there, looking into one of the transports. He inspects how full it was and turns to the cop loading it. "Okay, don't put anyone else on." He then gets on his scroll, "Nora, I got space, bring him out." But she doesn't answer, "Nora?" Ren, feeling something was wrong, begins to head back towards the hospital, against the flow of the scared crowd.

Back to Whitley, he is trailing the police van from a distance. "I saw Burns, Zachary, and a third cop that I don't know." Klein is looking into the information on those names, "Burns is, clean... Zachary..."

Whitley shakes his head, knowing that he is potentially running out of time, "There's at least one cop in that car that I don't know about, send the information directly to Ozpin."

Inside the van, Oz's scroll beeps. He pulls it out and sees a message was sent to him. He opens it up to read the text. In it, it reads: Watch out.

Back inside the now empty hospital, Ren is seen walking to James' room, his partner nowhere in sight. He looks around a bit as he opens the door.

He opened the door to see the back of Ruby by James' bedside, reading from a chart. James was laying on the nearby bed, bound by many restraint belts and handcuffs.

"Ma'am, we need to get the patient out of-" The officer was cut off when she turned around and shot him between the eyes, revealing that she had a mask covering most of the lower half of her face, but the white and black makeup hints just who really killed him.

The noise from the shot wakes James up.

We cut back to Whitley's car zipping around traffic to get closer to the van. Inside the van, Ozpin is reading his text: Cops with relatives in Vale Hospitals. Belladonna, Berg.

Ozpin looks up sharply, and sees the uniformed cop sitting opposite him nervously fingering his shotgun.

Oz then smiles at him and tries to get his attention, "Berg, isn't it?" The young cop looks up at his name, sweat clear on his brow. "Commissioner?" he asks, nervous. Oz tries to calm him down, "You okay, son?" Berg nods and smiles, glancing down at his watch.

Back to the hospital room, 'Ruby' is pushing a button, forcing James to lay more upright in his bed. 'She' then removed her face mask, revealing it to be the Joker, and causing James to spasm, growl, and grab at him in rage.

He grins at James in sympathy for his condition, who only looks on and nearly bursting with rage.

"Um, hiiii." He says, rather slowly and awkwardly.

Joker then sat down next to him, James being too tied up at the moment to do much. He then takes off his wig and ruffles up his dyed green hair with blond slivers slightly showing.

"You know," The Joker begins, "I don't want there to be any hard feeling between us, James."

James just stares in rage.

"When you and um..." The Joker pauses, trying to remember the man's girlfriend's name.

James, his rage at the boiling point, utterly explodes, "GLYNDA!"

The Joker jumps slightly, and raises his hands in surrender, but he continues, "...Glynda. While you two were being abducted, I was sitting in Ozpin's cage. Now, I-I didn't rig those charges."

"Your men, your plan." James seethes through his teeth, his other nodding in agreement.

Joker looks at him with a deadpan expression, "Do I really look like a guy with a plan?"

James just stares incredulously.

"You know what I am?" He continues as James lightly tries to break free, "I'm a dog chasing cars. Heh, I wouldn't know what to do with one if I caught it. You know I just, do~ things."

James looks around the room as Joker continues, "The mob has plans. The cops have plans. Ozpin's got plans. You see, they're schemers." He moves his fingers in a grabbing motion.

"Schemers trying to control their little worlds. I'm not a schemer." As he says this, James stops moving altogether, "I try to show the schemers how... pathetic, their attempts to control things really are."

James' breathing becomes ragged and short as Joker grabs his restrained hand.

"So, when I say- Ah, come here." Joker says as he puts his hand on James', much to his resistance, as he looks deeply into his eyes. "When I say that you and your girlfriend was nothing personal, you know that I'm telling the truth."

Back to the police van, Ozpin watches Berg and traces the trajectory of the barrel as Berg fiddles with the gun. "I'm gonna need your weapon, son."

Berg looks at Gordon. "What?" he asks as he now blatantly points his gun directly at Scarlet's chest, much to the man's wide-eyed horror. "Why?" he continues, "Because my wife's in hospital?" Ozpin nods, "Yeah. That would be why."

Back in the room, Joker is slowly undoing the leather bindings on James' right wrist.

"It's the schemers that put you where you are." He says as he moves to the left side of the bed, pointing around him. "You were a schemer. You had plans... and look where that got you."

James lashed out as his arms were freed and grabbed The Joker.

Back at traffic, Whitley roars past a line of cars to settle in a few cars back from the van as a red light occurs. Inside his car, he studies the intersection and spots a pickup jostling for a position on the cross street while a radio transmission is broadcasted that people were beginning to take matters into their own hands.

In the hospital, after some struggling, Joker pinned James' arms down, leaning forward until their noses nearly touch.

"I just do what I do best." Joker continued, "I took your little plan and I turned it on itself." he explains as he waves James' arms about.

James just continued to glare in rage.

Joker then leans back a bit as he looks outside the overhead window, "Look what I did to this city with just a couple of gas tanks and some bullets. Hmm?" Joker then paused, "You know? You know what I noticed? Nobody panics when things go 'according to plan', even if the plan is horrifying." He air quotes.

He shakes his head, "If I tell the press that tomorrow a gangbanger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blowing up, nobody panics. Because it's all part of 'the plan'." He then raises a finger, "But when I say that one, little old mayor will die... well then everybody loses their shit!" He shouts as he raises his hands in mock horror.

He leans back and reaches inside his pocket, pulling out a pistol, the same one that the James off screen uses. "Introduce a little anarchy," he says as he leans forward again, then places it in James' hands, "upset the established order" he cocks the gun back, "and everything becomes chaos." then he forces him to point the barrel directly to his forehead.

"I'm an agent of chaos." He smiles in pride at his admission, "Oh, and you know the thing about chaos, James?" he asks as he points a finger at him.

He looks on with an intrigued expression at his speech, while his eyes repeatedly glance between the gun and the Joker. He then raises his unburnt eyebrow at the question.

"It's fair."

James looks at him for a bit, contemplating his next action. He looks down, causing the Joker to do the same, then back again with a narrowed eye. He holds up the item that Joker gave him, the only thing left from his beloved Glynda, his father's lucky coin that he gave her, its 'tails side' blackened and scarred.

He holds the coin to the unburnt side, "You live." Joker nods in agreement.

He then flips it to the burnt side, "You die."

"Oh, now we're talking." Joker boasts.

James flips the coin, and it lands on his chest.

"You got lucky." James says, showing the unburnt side.

"Luck's got nothing to do with it." Joker says as he releases James' hands and leaves him to his own devices.

Back to the streets, the light turns green, and the van starts to move forward. Inside, the cop looks nervously, but resolutely at his target, and as he pulls the trigger Oz leaps forward and forces the gun to point upwards, causing him to shoot the ceiling and thus saving the man's life. Outside, the pickup suddenly guns it, the driver's intentions clear.

Inside the Lamborghini Whitley sees this, and floors it too, and yanks the wheel to pull up onto the opposite lane. The pickup barrels at the van, but at the last second Whitley's car slips alongside the van. The pickup smashes into his car as the momentum causes him to hit the van, but not enough to do anything other than jolting it.

In the hospital, the Joker is near a rubbing alcohol dispenser as he presses a button and rubs the goo over his hands. He then walks calmly through the mostly deserted hallway.

While the Joker is escaping, James is seen getting out of his room, putting on the clothes that were on him when he was caught in that explosion. He leaves his room, putting his gun in one of his pockets while holding onto his coin, and as he walks down the hallway he hears somebody moaning in pain.

He turned to a corner and saw Ruby leaning on a wall while clutching her wounded stomach.

"H-Help me." She begged as she tried to reach for him, "Please... Help me."

His expression not changing, James takes out and flips his coin. It lands on the burnt side.

Still not saying anything, he takes out his gun and points to her head, watching as she looks on with a shocked expression.

On the streets, Ozpin's men are pulling the pickup driver from his car, and the man himself walks down to the car wreck that saved them. He sees Whitley sitting down next to the totaled car. He recognizes him as he got a closer look, one of his men taking a look into any possible injuries he may have received. "You okay, Mr. Schnee?"

Whitley looks up at him, woozy. "That was a brave thing you did, sir." Whitley just looks confusedly at him, "Trying to catch the light?" Oz looks back to the wrecks and back, "Wait, so you weren't protecting the van?"

Whitley turns and sees the police van as if for the first time. "Why? Who's in it?" he asks as he looks at Scarlet stepping away from the collision, dazed. His vision clears up, and he locks eyes with Whitley. Knowing who to thank for his continued existence, he nods and lowers his gaze in shame.

Whitley turns back to Oz as he begins to massage the back of his neck and asks, "Don't you think I should head for a hospital?"

Oz gives an amused expression at him as he says "You don't watch a whole lot of news, do you Mr. Schnee?"

Back to the Joker, as he's walking he pulls a detonator from his pocket. Strolling along he presses the detonation button while muttering, "Kapoowa." Just then, staggered explosions burst into the corridor behind him like demolition blasts.

He just walks out the door and strolls down the steps as explosions continue to erupt behind him, windows blowing out in series and debris litter the area. In the parking lot, Lisa and her crew hear the explosions and immediately head for the nearby transport. Inside, people scream as they dive for cover. The Joker walks across the parking lot, parts of the building collapsing behind him, and he raises his arms out and smiles at the audience to showcase what he did.

Then the explosions stop. Joker turns around confused. He starts to walk forward again but stops again as he sees no new explosions happening. He then stares deadpan, a bit embarrassed over this turn of events, and mutters, "Oh, are you freaking kidding me?"

Ignoring that, he then takes out his remote and starts pressing random buttons and slapping the remote in frustration.

"Come on, work you stupid-" Joker was cut off when the rest of the explosive go off destroying the rest of the hospital.

He quickly ducks as he hops on the transport that Lisa was on unnoticed. From there he and the audience watched the chaos unfold.

In an overhead view, the screen shows the hospital being engulfed in multiple large explosions, the sheer amount destroying the foundations and causing the entire building to collapse under its own weight. As it collapses, a large black dust cloud erupts into the sky, its shadow covering the once clear skies as it completely engulfs the screen.


	10. 10

Cutting to inside a bar in an empty neighborhood. Behind the counter, the bartender Tukson was watching the breaking news on the TV about the hospital, and the military now taking an active role. "Holy Hell. They actually blew up a hospital..."

He looked to the person sitting in front of him. "Are you seeing this, Adam?"

There, Detective Adam Taurus was sitting in a booth and looking up at the TV, bored. Tukson looked worryingly at him, "Shouldn't you be out there, you know, doing something?"

Adam shrugged, "It's my day off." He then drank his alcohol.

Tukson shuts the register sadly. Sighing, he says "I gotta take a leak, keep an eye on things, will ya?" Adam nods distractingly and Tukson steps out. He looks over his shoulder with suspicion and the screen focuses on his face. A few seconds later, the back door opens again with footsteps being heard coming from behind the counter.

Still looking backwards, Adam smirks, "What? You need me to shake it for..." He turns back and trails off as someone sticks a gun to his face. The view moves back, and it shows that the one holding the gun is James Ironwood.

James glares at the man, wearing the same suit that he wore when he lost everything, showing similar burns as his face. "Hello."

Adam gulped, "James, I thought you was...dead..." James took the glass and said "Half." before drinking the last of Adam's drink. Adam watches the bare muscles retract as James swallows, which caused many in the audience to wrench at. He then tossed the glass behind him, wiping what alcohol that escaped through the holes, before cocking the gun. "Who picked up Glynda, Adam?"

Adam gulped, "It must've been one of Jacques' men-" James interrupts him by slamming his free fist on the counter and yelling "SHUT UP!" in anger. Adam, and many in the audience, flinches. "You, of all people, are gonna protect the other traitor in Oz's unit?"

Adam became more nervous as he looks down at the gun, "I don't know, he'd never tell me." He stares at James and shook his head, "I swear to Oum, I didn't know what they were gonna do to you!"

James snorts and pulls out his coin, dropping it in a way so that it spins on the counter. "Funny," he says, looking down at the spinning coin, "I don't know what's going to happen to you, either." It stops and lands on the table. Scarred side up. James glares at him and raises his gun. BANG!

Just as the gunshot was heard, the scene changed to outside the remains of the blown-up hospital where Oz was frantically surveying the scene with a cop. "You must know how many were inside," he addressed the officer, "you've got patient lists, roll calls-" "Sir!" The cop interrupted.

"Sir. Look at what we're dealing with. Cops, National Guard..." he gestures at the chaos, then to the transports. "We're showing 50 missing, but that building was clear. These transports are heading off to other hospitals." He stops to sigh in slight frustration, "My guess is we missed one."

Oz nods sarcastically, "Yeah? What's your guess about where James Ironwood is?" The cop says nothing. "Keep looking." He orders, tapping his chest as he adds "And keep it to yourself." The cop nods and goes to fulfill his order, leaving Oz to look back at the chaos and fear that the Joker brought upon his city.

Inside Schnee Enterprises, Adrian is watching the news. His intercom suddenly buzzes. "Uh, sir?" His secretary says. "Security footage is showing a break-in at the R&D department." He narrows his eyes, telling his secretary that he'll be right there.

Inside the corridor outside the R&D, Adrian watches two security men force the door open, but he orders them to wait outside while he enters alone. Inside the lab, he enters the dimly-lit room. At one end is a wide desk and an extraordinary array of thousands of tiny monitors.

Adrian approaches the table, fascinated, as they quietly display architectural patterns individually and in concert. The images become a map. "Beautiful. Isn't it?" Batman says, the screen zooming in on some of the monitors, showing the man's face hidden in their shadows.

He nods, staring at the monitors as Batman approaches. "Beautiful. Unethical. Dangerous. You've turned every scroll in the city into a microphone." He presses a key, and the babble of a million conversations at once fills the room. Every scroll in the city. Batman nods, "And high frequency generator/receiver."

Adrian looks to him, "Like the scroll I gave you in Atlas." He looks back to the screens, a hint of fear at what he's seeing, and its implications, taking hold. "You took my sonar concept and applied it to everybody's scroll in Vale. With half the city feeding you sonar you can image all of Vale."

He turns to Batman, "This is wrong."

Batman proves the villains' theory. "I've got to find this man, Adrian." Adrian looks to Batman with a scowl. "But at what cost?" he asks.

Batman looks to the computer system, "The database is null-key encrypted." he looks to the man, "It can only be accessed by one person."

But the man shakes his head in defiance. "No one should have that kind of power." He looks glances to the side briefly before looking back to Batman.

Batman walks forward a bit, "That's why I gave it to you. Only you can use it." Adrian gazes hard at Batman. "Spying on thirty million people isn't in my job description." he proclaims, still not agreeing with this. Batman points to a TV screen and he turns. On screen, the Joker himself is shaking his head above a graphic labeled: "LATEST THREAT".

Across the city, people stop and look to the broadcast. The camera switches over to Lisa Lavender, upside down and a drawing of a smile on her face, but thankfully not with the accompanying scars to match to the heroes' relief. She looks terrified at the camera as she's handed a small stack of leaflets and says, "What does it take to make you people want to join in..?"

In a tent near the hospital's husk, Oz watches a screen with a grave expression. "You failed to kill the lawyer... I've got to get you off the bench and into the game. So, here it is..." We head to inside a bar downtown, packed with business people who watch the TV silently, "Come nightfall, this city is mine, and anyone left plays by my rules." We cut back to Adrian and Batman, "If you don't want to be in the game, get out now." Back to the bar, we see patrons start moving to leave, but stop when she finishes the threat. "But the bridge-and-tunnel crowd are in for a surprise. Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha." Lisa fake laughs as the Joker laughs in the background, before the camera angles to him and the camera cuts to static. The bar patrons look around, scared.

Back in the lab, Adrian looks away from the TV to look at Batman. Batman nods, "Trust me." Adrian just stares at him. "This is the audio sample." He plugs a USB chip into the console, and suddenly a sample of the Joker's voice from the call-in news program starts playing. "If he talks within range of any scroll in the city, you'll be able to triangulate his position." The man toggles a menu. From there, he sees that the city is an open book. He sees people working, eating, sleeping.

Adrian shakes his head. "When you've finished, type your name to switch it off." Batman then moves to leave the room, but stops when Adrian says "I'll help you this one time..."

He glares at him, "But consider this my resignation." Batman turns to see the glare directed at him. "As long as this machine is at Schnee Enterprises, I won't be."

At dusk, in various locations the people of Vale are pouring out of the city, by foot and by car. The bridges and tunnels are deserted, except for bomb squad search teams actively looking for anything 'funny'.

Inside City Hall, Oz is briefing Port. "My officers are going over every inch of the tunnels and bridges with a fine comb, but with the Joker's threat they're not an option." Port strokes his mustache as he looks thoughtfully for any solution to this problem. "Land routes East?" He suggests, but Oz shakes his head and regretfully says, "Backed up for hours. Which leaves the ferries with thirty thousand waiting to board." He sighs at this, "Plus, the jails are at capacity, so I want to use a ferry to take some prisoners off the island."

Port looked at him disbelievingly. "The men you and James put away?" He shakes his head, "Those aren't people I'm worried about."

Outside at a ferry terminal, the National Guardsman are watching over the 30 thousand jostling, scared people waiting to board the two massive ferries to the neighboring city of Patch. Grumbles of fear turned to yells as they watch 800 prisoners being loaded onto a ferry by shotgun-toting, armor-wearing, officers.

One of the civilians was trying to get over the barricades that the police set up earlier to separate the two groups, yelling "That ain't right! We should be on that boat." The Guardsman next to him turned to address him, "You want to ride across with them, be my guest." That got the man to quiet down.

Cutting to the back of a warehouse, we see Jacques being escorted by two goons to a parked limo nearby, cane in hand as he slightly limps. One of the men peeled away with Jacques to open the passenger door on the far side as the other one was about to open the door nearest to him when he was suddenly grabbed by someone and pulled off-screen.

Inside, Jacques settles back into his seat, feeling safe inside the limo with his most trusted bodyguards as the car pulls away. "Don't stop for lights, cops, nothing." He looks to the seat next to him, expecting to see his lieutenant there, but tensed up in fear at seeing who was really sitting next to him.

It was James, head facing forward as to hide his scars.

James looked sideways, "Going to join your wife?" Jacques gulps, seeing him clutch a pistol. He nods slowly. "You love her?" he asks. Jacques looks at him, confused by the question but answers anyway. "Yes."

James discreetly rolled his eyes, knowing how the man likes to spend his free time, turning to him fully and asked, "Can you imagine what it would be like to listen to her die?" Jacques leans to him, and says with as much confidence as he can, "Look, take it up with the Joker, ok? He killed your woman. Made you... like this..." He pointed to the damage in his face.

James half smiled, "The Joker's just a mad dog. I want whoever let him off the leash." Jacques looks at the man, worried. James sees this and tries to coax him by saying "I took care of Adam, now who's your other man inside Ozpin's unit? Who picked up Glynda? It must've been someone she trusted."

Jacques swallowed and took a deep breath, "Look If I tell you, will you let me go?" James points the gun at him. "Can't hurt your chances."

He glanced at the gun, before smirking at James, "It was Belladonna."

James pulls out his coin and cocks the pistol. Jacques paled at the action, saying "But you said-" but was interrupted by James saying, "I said it couldn't hurt your chances." He then flips the coin and watches as it lands on his wrist.

They look. It landed on the good side.

James just shrugs. Looking at Jacques, he says "You're a lucky guy." The crime boss looks confused, but smiles, thinking that he was in the clear. Dent suddenly flips the coin again and watches it land again. He looks down at the coin and shakes his head. "But he's not."

"Who?" Jacques asked, afraid of who he was talking about.

James smiles at him, putting on his seatbelt on as points his gun forward. "Your driver."

He presses the barrel of the revolver behind the shadow of the driver, and fires. Outside, the Limo swerves off a bridge, and soars out over the canal, and pancakes into the retaining wall.

Back to the ferry terminal, civilians are cramming their way onto one of the ferries, desperately hoping to be one of the first ones to leave. Finally, the commander of the National Guard unit signals to his men to stop boarding and cast off. The two ferries then begin to set off across the river, heading for the lights of the distant shore of the mainland as night falls.

Inside the bridge of the prisoner ferry, the First Mate looks out the window to the second ferry. The other ferry suddenly stops dead in the water. He turns to the pilot, saying "They've lost their engines."

The pilot shakes his head in slight frustration and says, "Get on the radio and tell 'em we'll come back for them once we dump these scumbags." The First Mate nods, but as he moved to the radio, suddenly, the control panel flickers and dies.

The pilot looks over his equipment, before turning to the First Mate and ordering him to get down to the engine room and see what the problem was. In the passenger lounge of the prisoner ferry, the man skirts around the prisoners and guards before heading inside an access corridor.

The First Mate then opens the door to the engine room. He goes inside, but immediately stops at what he sees. There, surrounding the boilers and crammed together on the floors, were hundreds of barrels of fuel.

A small, wrapped present, topped with a bow, was sitting oh so innocently on top of one of the barrels closest to him. In the bridge, the pilot is holding the small present that the First Mate just gave him. Over the radio, the pilot of the passenger ferry is heard saying, "Same thing over here, with enough fuel to blow us all sky high. And a present."

Outside in an elevated roadway downtown, Batman is sitting on the bat-pod, cape blowing in the wind as he listens to the chatter of the ferries that he's watching over. He taps his commlink once, "Adrian? There's something going on with the ferries..."

In the passenger lounge of the civilian ferry, as cold and scared families watch, the commander of the guards unwraps that ferry's present. Inside, he finds a crude remote detonator. He looks confusedly to his men, "Why would they give us the detonator to our own bomb?"

Up in the wiring at the ceiling, a scroll taped in to the P.A. rings and answers. The Joker's voice is then heard over the P.A. "Tonight, you're all going to be part of a social experiment."

On both ferries, everyone stops what they're doing and listens to the Joker's announcement. Fear, already high, was starting to cause a mild panic but no one did anything, too paralyzed in fear to do much more than breath.

In the lab, Adrian looks up as the console chimes. He leans into the microphone and says "I'm zeroing in." The Joker's voice is heard over the speakers, "Through the magic of diesel fuel and ammonium nitrate, I'm ready to blow you all sky high." Inside the bridge of the prisoner ferry, the pilot is trying to contact anyone with the radio but stops when he realizes something. "It's dead." He turns to the crew, "He killed the radio."

The Joker's voice is heard again, "Anyone attempts to get off their boat, you all die..." Adrian presses a few keys, trying to triangulate the Joker's location. "His voice is on the ferry, but that's not the source..."

On top of the rooftops over Vale, Batman looks out across the entire city skyline. "Do you have a location on the Joker?" Adrian's voice is heard through the link, "It's west..." Batman immediately fires up the bat-pod, his cape shrinks into its pack form as he peels out, roaring into the night.

Back to the boats, the Joker wasn't finished yet explaining the rules for his new game. "Now there's no need for all of you to die. That would be a waste. So, I've left you both a little present." In each boat, we see the commanders carry with them the 'present'. The detonators. "Each of you has a remote to blow up the other boat."

We then cut briefly to a penthouse suite of a hotel building, where the Joker is seen staring out over the harbor at the ferries. He's talking into a scroll as he's holding a notepad with words to his speech as he reads from it. "At midnight, I blow you all up." He says, smiling at the view.

Cutting back to the boats, the Joker's voice continues, "But we're going to make things a little more interesting than that. Tonight, we're going to learn a little bit about ourselves..."

In the passenger lounge of the prisoner ferry, both the prisoners and cops listen, appalled by his actions. "If one of you presses the button, I'll let that boat live. So, who's it going to be?" Cutting to both the passenger sections as the choices are read, "James Ironwood's most wanted scumbag collection, or the sweet innocent civilians? You choose. Oh, and you might want to decide quickly, because the people on the other boat may not be quite so noble." The Joker then hangs up.

The pilot of the prisoner ferry looks down at the remote in his hands. Just then, the prisoners begin yelling and pushing, desperately trying to reach for the remote.

The Warden takes the remote from the pilot and cocks his shotgun. His men, taking the hint, all level their weapons at the crowd. Cutting to the docks, Oz looks out at the ferries. Then his scroll rings. He answers it and hears Batman's voice, "I have the Joker's location."

In Vale's streets, Batman soars on the bat-pod. As he drives, he's giving directions to Oz on the location. "He's hold up inside the Prewitt building. Assemble on the building opposite."

In the civilian ferry's lounge, the commander is holding the remote. Several passengers take a step towards him, and he quickly pulls out his weapon. "Stay back." he says.

A businessman clutching his briefcase speaks up, "Who are you to decide?" He looks around at the crowd with one arm spread wide, "Now we ought to talk this over, at least." Other passengers nod or voice their agreement.

A mother holding her two kids close speaks up. "We don't all have to die. Why should my babies die?" She points to the other boat while looking at the commander, "Those people had their chance."

The commander shakes his head, saying "We're not talking about this..."

The businessman shouts "Well why aren't we talking about this?!" And another civilian points to the other boat, "They're talking over the same thing on the other boat."

The mother snorts and looks to the other passenger, "If they're even bothering to talk." She addresses the crowd, "Let's put it to a vote."

Back to the other ferry, as the prisoners grow angrier, an officer fires his shotgun into the air.

The prisoners back off slightly but were now begging for the officers to hand then the device.

In the civilian boat, the commander relents and has one of the guards passes around a hat and some paper with pens. "Alright, each person has one vote, whether or not to blow up the other boat. Once you're done, simply place the paper inside and pass the hat around to the next person." People were quickly writing down their answers and dropping them into the hat. Those who already filled theirs out eye each other. Some of them are on their scrolls saying goodbye to their loved ones.

The pilot of the passenger ferry looks out across the water to the other boat, before looking up at the overhead clock. It reads 10 to midnight. He then stares down at his blank paper before gulping, praying for forgiveness as he writes down his answer.

Cutting over to Ozpin's home, Salem was cooking dinner for her little girls before her scroll goes off. She frowns, "That's odd, I'm not expecting a call right now." She nevertheless answers it. "Hello?"

She hears Blake's voice over the call, "Salem, it's Blake Belladonna."

Salem smiles at hearing her friend's voice, "Oh hi, Blake."

She heard Blake's voice say "Listen carefully, there's no time. Oz needs you to pack up and get the kids in the car right away."

Her expression turned to worry, "But the units outside-" But Blake interrupted her, "Salem, those cops outside can't be trusted. Oz needs you away from them as soon as possible. I'll call them off for 10 minutes, but you'll have to move fast" She peeked over her shoulder in fear, "But where do we go?"

"I'm going to give you an address, Oz will meet you there..." Cutting to the MCU Blake is seen holding her scroll. She relays the location, "250, 52nd street. Leave as soon as the patrol car pulls out." The view pans out to show that James is holding a gun to Blake's head.

She hangs up and James said "She believe you?" Blake looks down as she silently nods with tears in her eyes from what she did. "that's 'cause she trusts you. Just like Glynda did."

Blake looked back to him, "I didn't know-" but James continued in a mocking voice, "'What they were gonna do'? You're the second cop to say that to me. What, exactly, did you think they were going to do?"

She looked remorsefully at him, "I'm sorry, they got me early on. My mother's medical bills and my-" "Don't!" James takes out and flips his coin. "I'm sorry." She whispered.

James looks at his coin. Bad side.

He looks back to her, "Not good enough." James cracks her on the head with his gun, then levels it to her head and shoots her.

On a rooftop overlooking the Prewitt building, Oz and his SWAT team leaders are setting up sniper & scope positions on the edge. Inside the garage of the building, SWAT teams are standing beside the empty transport that the Joker hijacked earlier. The leader radioed in, "Sir, we've found our missing transport."

Back to the rooftop, Oz looks at the SWAT leader after hearing the report. "Then we have a hostage situation."

They turned to look across at the large windows of the Prewitt Building. The Joker's men, in crude, homemade clown masks are clearly visible with automatic weapons in hand. One of the snipers looked through his scope and shouted "I got hostages!"

The two look through his scope. Crouched deeper in the room were patients, doctors, and nurses, huddled in small groups in fear.

Oz narrowed his eyes, "It's a shooting gallery. Why'd he choose a spot with such big windows?"

A voice from behind him says "He likes the view." He turns around to see Batman there. The man then gestures towards the view of the ferries.

The SWAT leader turns and lays out his plan, "We have clear shots on five clowns. Snipers take them out, smash the windows, one team rappels in, another moves in by the stairwells. Two or three casualties, max."

Oz doesn't even hesitate. "Let's do it."

Batman shakes his head, "It's not that simple. With the Joker, it never is."

Oz glares at him "What's simple," he starts, pointing to the marooned boats, "is that every second we don't take him, those people on the ferries get closer to blowing each other up!"

Batman shakes his head and says resolutely, That won't happen." Oz, losing his patience, shouts "Then he'll blow them both up! There's no time," he turns to his SWAT leader, "we have to go in now"

Batman wasn't giving up, knowing that this was too suspicious of the Joker. "There's always a catch with him"

Oz turns his head back to him, "That's why we can't wait," turning his head forward, he continues sadly, "we can't keep playing his games."

Batman turns around, "I need five minutes. Alone."

Oz didn't like that plan, shouting as he fully turns around. "No, there's no time!" He then pulls out his gun, much to the shock of everyone, "We have clear shots!"

Batman turns back in mild surprise as the SWAT's watch on. "James' is in there with them. We have to save James!" Batman then turns and leaps off the building. "I have to save James." He turns to the SWAT Leader, "Get ready."

We briefly cut to Batman opening his cape, and soars across the gulf between the two buildings, before going back to Oz as he puts his weapon away. Curses softly, he turns to the SWAT leader. "Two minutes. Then you breach." The man nods, and the two look to the other building.

Outside the Prewitt building, Batman lands against the glass two floors below. He then taps his commlink, "Adrian. I need picture." He says softly, peering inside.

In the lab, Adrian hits a few keys. "You've got POV on alpha channel, omni on beta."

Back to the building, smoked glass eyepieces slip down over Batman's eye holes. The view switches over to his sonar POV. The layers of the building dissolve, levels of transparency pulsing rhythmically. Batman can now see the people inside the building

Inside the building's penthouse, the Joker is standing by the window, looking out at his handiwork. Roman's dogs who are nearby start barking. He smiles.

With Batman, he reaches into his utility belt, and sprays some plastic onto the glass, much to the audience's bewilderment pauses as he lets it harden, then punches the window.

Which breaks quietly as the pieces stick to the laminate, and he slips inside.

Inside, Batman's eyes glow white as he uses his sonar to look through the corner, where an armed clown is leaning against it. The view turning to show the clown wearing a brown vest over a torn white shirt, with a collar spiking up behind her neck, maroon-colored pants with the right side rolled up to her thigh, and brown boots with dark brown knee guards.

Outside on top the roof, a six man SWAT team prepares to rappel, checking over their equipment for a final inspection. Inside, at a stairwell, another team moves up the stairs.

On the rooftop overlooking the building, Oz's scroll starts ringing. He takes it out and answers it once he sees who it is, "Hello?" Someone's voice is briefly heard, but the words are all jumbled up, "Salem, calm down."

"He has the kids!" Then James' voice is heard, "Hello, Oz."

Ozpin stops, "James?" When he sees his men start to look at him, he steps back to have more privacy. "What the hell's going on?" he asks softly.

The man's voice is heard in an calm tone, "You're about to know what my suffering is really like." Oz looks across at the Prewitt penthouse, his voice no longer quiet. "Where are you? Where's my family?!"

James's tone turns ominous, "Where my family died." Then call ended. Oz's heart froze in fear, and he looks at the SWAT leader, pale in the face.

The SWAT leader turns to his radio and shouts "Red Team. Go!" as Oz quickly moves to the door off the roof.

Inside the building, Batman quietly moves and grabs the armed clown, dropping her silently. He goes to disarm her, but he sees that the weapon is duct-taped to her hands. He rips off the mask, and sees the frightened eyes, mouth duct-taped shut, of Lisa Lavender!

Batman looks up. Four more clowns line the windows, muffling as it seems that their mouths are gagged too, weapons duct-taped to their hands too. Several red dots are lining them up, signifying where the snipers intend to hit. The audience then sees that the 'patients' and 'doctors' are all carrying weapons hidden within their person. These are all Joker's men.

Now the heroes were shaking, those women were right.

Above them, he sees the SWAT team about to rappel from the rooftop. Looking down in the stairwells, two more teams are prepping to go up. He turns to the frightened Lisa, "Don't. Move." She nods, still terrified.

In the rooftop across from them, The snipers line up the clowns in their sights. In a stairwell, the SWAT team arrives at the fire exit. They then spread charges across the inner wall.

Back to the snipers, the SWAT Leader checks his watch. Looking at the time, he calls it. "Go! Go! Go!" A sniper zeroes in on a clown, but the clown disappears from his scope. The Sniper looks up, confused.

In the building, Batman yanks the clown along the floor using his grapple gun, with the clown taking down the two next to him as he fell. He then leaps for the nearest two as shots shatter the glass.

Back to the roof, the SWATS rappel down the building.

Meanwhile, the 'hostages' reel away from the blast and the SWAT team swoops in aiming weapons at the 'clowns'. The 'hostages' grin as the SWAT team tells them to get behind them and warn the 'clowns' to put the weapons down, prepping their own for the most opportune moment.

Throwing percussion grenades, Batman takes out the SWAT team with fists and Batarangs. The last SWAT aims at Batman, and behind him a 'doctor' raises a shotgun. Behind the 'doctor', Batman sees through the wall at SWAT's preparing to breach. Batman runs and vaults over the SWAT and launches a two-foot kick into the 'doctor's' chest.

In the stairwell, the SWATs blast out the wall. The team leader steps up to the hole, and the Bat-Grapple fires out, lodging in his Kevlar vest, and the man's yanked, screaming, through the door. The rest of his team look at each other.

Batman aims his grappler and fires, snagging the SWAT leader's vest, then grabs the two remaining 'clowns' and drops a floor below, using the now screaming man as a counterweight and a battering ram to the two 'hostages' nearby.

The remainder of the team steel themselves, and move in through the hole.

As they race inside they find Lisa, terrified, next to a pile of unconscious 'hostages'.

Batman, with the two people he has, rappel down, he swings them to the backs of a group of 'hostages', taking a few out while he gets up and punches one in the face, before blocking a blow from another, kicking that one away before returning to the first.

Just as the person was about to aim with a pistol that he took out, Batman forced him to aim low and fire away from him. He then punched the 'doctor' in the stomach, forcing him to bend over in pain, opening his back for an elbow to the spine, courtesy of Batman's armored self.

Seeing that the room was secure, he looked up as he sees the SWAT team rappel closer to his position.

The team had had just enough time to swing in and assess the situation when Batman falls from the ceiling and starts weaving around with kicks and punches, throwing them away when they were unresponsive.

He then heard Adrian's voice through the link, "Look up." He did. "You see that group on the floor above?" He nods. "They're waiting to ambush the SWAT team coming up the elevator."

Batman quickly whips out a gun-like device and starts firing at the support beams.

The view zooming in on one of them to show that what he fired wasn't bullets, but a tiny device covered in some kind of goo with a timer that seemed to be counting down.

Just then, several SWAT members came at him for another round.

Back to the ferries, the pilot of the passenger one finishes counting the votes. Reading the verdict, he announces "The tally is 196 votes against," He looks down in sadness, "340 votes for." The passengers sigh but avoid eye contact with each other. One of the civilians calls out "Well what are you waiting for? Do it!"

The pilot looks to the device, muttering "We're still here... that means they haven't killed us yet either."

In the criminal's side, the officers are in a phalanx in the corner, facing off against hundreds of prisoners. Several were pleading with them, one was heard shouting "Do you wanna die!" The Warden and his men look at each other, then at the clock.

The elevator team reach their floor and immediately fans out to cover more ground. They see the group and aim their weapons at them.

Cutting to the lab briefly, Adrian sees this and informs Batman that there's trouble on the floor.

back to Batman's fight, he pulls out a rope from the SWAT that he just slammed into a support beam, thankfully not one that he fired a device at. He then went around and with one hand, clipped carabiners looped to the rope onto the webbing of vests from the remaining team as they went to engage.

As he grabbed another team member, the view switched to one of the objects just as it reached zero. The view returned to the fight as the devices exploded, taking the pillars down with them.

It just so happens that the area that the pillars supported were what the SWAT team above was standing on, so when they exploded and fell they took the floor, and the team, with them. Batman then steps back, and picks up the officer who he just now realized was the team leader. The SWAT team, recovering from the thrashing they received, aims their weapons at him, telling him that it's over, and to let their leader go.

He does. He hurls the team leader out the window. The team watch him go with gaping expressions, then the rope pays out, and one by one they are yanked out of the window. One grabbed a small beam in his panic of not going out like the rest, but the weight was too much, tearing the beam right out of the ground as away he went.

Outside, a sniper watches through his scope as the six man SWAT team soars out of the window and drops. The line snaps taut and they hang, like a mountaineering team in crisis.

He sees Batman, crouched in the broken window, securing the line. "What the hell's he doing?" He asks as he sees Batman looking right at the sniper, raises his grapple gun, and BAM. The Bat-Grapple smashes into the sniper's scope, and the rifle is yanked out of his hands.

Batman then races to a hole, reloading his grapple gun, and fires up a large shaft. He sails upwards.

Meanwhile, the SWAT teams goes trough the 'clowns' and 'hostages', and as they pull the masks off, they finally notice the differences. A notice over the radio is soon heard, "Be advised: Clowns are hostages, Doctors are targets!" We then see a 'doctor' get tackled by one of the SWAT members.

In the main office area, the Joker hears his dogs barking again. Turning around, showing the audience the steel pipe in his left hand, he sees Batman walking from the shadows.

"Oh, you came." He grins, holding up the pipe in joy. "I'm so thrilled." Batman's voice is heard as the screen zooms in on the Joker, "Where's the detonator?" He sucks his teeth, then turns to face his dogs. Taking out and activating a switchblade, he flaps his right hand forward. "Go get him!"

The Dogs leap at Batman, one smashing into him but he directs its momentum over the edge and the others slam him into the ground.

Batman wrestles with the two remaining Rottweilers on the ground, a blinding mass of Batman, black fur and bared teeth. As this was going on, the Joker stalks over to the tangled mess.

Moving in to the mass, he starts hitting it with his knife and pipe, not caring if he hits the dogs but still miraculously missing them.

Back to the hostage situation, the SWAT teams are moving in on the remains of Joker's crew.

Back to the prisoner boat, one of the prisoners, a tattooed version of Hazel Rainart, pushes his way to the front, silencing the others.

He walks towards the Warden, who is sweating, and looks at the remote. "You don't wanna die. But you don't know how to take a life." He says softly. "Give it to me." The Warden looks down at the remote, then at the clock. Hazel points to the rest of the prisoners with his restrained hands, "These men will kill you and take it, anyway. Give it to me, you can tell people I took it by force." The warden looks temped.

Hazel looks kindly to the Warden, "give it to me and I'll do what you should have done ten minutes ago."

In the other ferry, the pilot looks at the remote in his hands. "I voted for it. Same as most of you. Doesn't seem right that we should all die..."

Someone calls out from the back. "So do it!"

The pilot shakes his head, "I didn't say I'd do it. Don't forget. We're still here. They still haven't killed us yet." He sets the remote down on the box again the front of the lounge. The other passengers and guardsmen stare at it...

One minute left.

The businessman stands up, and walks over and picks it up. "No one wants to get their hands dirty. Fine. I'll do it." He stares hard at the pilot, "Those men on that boat made their choices. They chose to murder and steal." Shaking his head, he continues. "It makes no sense for us to die, too."

He looks at the other passengers. No one makes eye contact.

Back to the prison ferry, the Warden slowly hands Hazel the remote.

Hazel looks at it, looks at the Warden in the eye... and then tosses the remote out the window. The Warden, prisoners and officers are stunned.

Hazel meanwhile, turns and goes to sit back down, content that he did what the warden couldn't.

Back to the fight; under the constant beating from Joker, and the bites from the dogs, Batman manages to kick the Joker away. He proceeded to chuck the dogs down the shaft as well. He barely had the time to stand back up when the Joker jabs his pipe into Batman's ribs, sending him towards an open net where he rips it off its place and gets tangled in them. The Joker then slams the pipe into his knees, sending him back to the ground.

As he goes to sit on top of him, the Joker remarks "Oh all the old, familiar places." before stabbing him in the neck. Batman recoils in pain, but manages to get him off.

Batman gets up again, and looks around, his lenses flashing erratically showing that whatever Joker hit, it only affected the tech and nothing else, which caused some relief. In the lenses' POV, it shows the floor flashing in and out of view, before they turn off, leaving Batman blind.

In the lab, Adrian tells him to stand by as he tries restarting the imaging.

The lenses flash again, the POV showing how disorienting the images are, before finally stabilizing. Just as Joker's smiling face comes straight into focus.

The Joker swings his pipe like a batter with his bat, launching an injured Batman back through the window, glass flying, and landing on the ledge. The Joker then sits down on him, kicking out a wooden brace holding up the steel frame as he passes it. Batman's arms fly up as it comes crashing down onto his neck, saved by his protective gauntlets. Batman grunts as the Joker leans onto the steel beam.

The Joker looks to Batman and says, "You know, we really should stop this fighting, we're going to miss the fireworks."

Batman, struggling to keep the beam from crushing his neck, growls out "There won't be any fireworks."

Joker, not listening, looks out onto the harbor and gestures to the boats in anticipation, "And here, we, go."

In the civilian side, the businessman stares at the remote in his hands, inching towards the switch. Finally reaching a decision, he lowers his hand, and places the device back inside the box.

He goes back to his seat and sits down, bowing his head as another civilian pats him on the back, all are now waiting to die. The clock strikes midnight.

Back to the two, the Joker narrows his eyes, looking back to a clock mounted on a wall. It reads twelve o'clock. Batman says "What were you hoping to prove?" The Joker smiles, seeing the time.

Batman continues, "That deep down, everyone's as ugly as you?" The Joker looks back to the ferries, narrowing his eyes at them and tossing his pipe away in 'frustration'. "You're alone." He finishes.

In the ferries, the passengers and criminals brace for the explosion. When nothing happened they look at the clock, confused. It shows that a minute has passed.

back to the two, The Joker gazes at the non-blown up boats and rolls his eyes, muttering "Can't rely on anyone these days." Looking down to the pinned Dark Knight, "You gotta do everything yourself, don't we?" The Joker reaches inside his coat pocket and takes out a remote identical to the ones that are on the boats. "That's ok, I always come prepared."

The Joker starts arming the remote, looking to the boats again, "It's a funny world we live in..."

He pauses for a bit, smiles, then looks towards Batman and points to his face, "Speaking of which, brother, you know how I got these scars?" Batman looks up at him, confused by the random way he addressed him as.

"No." He growls as he repositions his gauntlet, "But I know how you get these!" Batman's blades fire out of his gauntlet, nailing the Joker in the chest and arm. He staggers back with a gasp and slight groan. Batman, freed, leaps forward, and kicks him over the edge.

The Joker laughs as he falls, enjoying the ride.

Something suddenly grabs his leg, and he jerks to a stop, he looks at what caught him and thus ruining his fun, seeing it to be Batman's grapple. The Joker sighs as he looks to the ground.

Batman is then seen hauling his ass up. The Joker comes up, groaning. Either from the pain of being lifted by a leg over several stories after abruptly stopping, or the fact that he was upside-down the entire time and no doubt has a lot of blood rushing to his brain, is anyone's guess.

The Joker is slowly spinning in a circle before stopping in front of Batman, *Groan*"You. You just couldn't let me go, could you?" Batman doesn't say anything and just ties up the line.

"I guess this is what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object." He points to Batman as the view angles itself so that when it looks to the Joker he is 'right-side up', "You truly are incorruptible, aren't you?" The Joker laughs a bit. "You won't kill me out of some misplaced sense of self-righteousness..." He snorts. "...and I won't kill you, because you're too much fun." He grins at the end of that sentence.

"I think that the both of us are destined to be doing this forever."

Batman glares at him, slightly panting from exertion. "You'll be in a padded cell, forever" he growls. The joker immediately responds with "Maybe we can share one."

A chuckle while he plays around with his situation, "Heh. You know that they'll need to double up, the rate this city's inhabitants are losing their minds..." Batman wasn't having it, pointing to Vale behind them. "This city just showed you, that it's full of people, ready to believe in good."

The Joker just looks up at him, a twinkle in his eye.

He raises an index finger, "Until, their spirit breaks completely." He grins, "Until they find out what I did with the best of them... Until they get a good look at the REAL James Ironwood, huh, and all the heroic things he's done."

He wheezes a laugh before gesturing towards the ferries, "Then those criminals back there will go right back to the streets, and Vale will understand the true nature of heroism."

He notices Batman's growing look of horror and raised an eyebrow, "You didn't actually think I'd risk losing the battle for the soul of Vale, in a fist fight with you?" He points to him with both his arms as he looks disappointedly at him.

He then shakes his head, "Noo. You need, an ace in the hole." Raising a finger 'up', "Mine's Jimmy~."

Batman whispers in despair, "What did you do?", almost begging in his tone.

The Joker grins, "I took Vale's White Knight, and I... brought him down to our level. It wasn't hard." Batman's look of horror grows, as did those in the hero side. "You see madness, as you know, is, like gravity~." He swings his arms in a circular motion, before reaching into his pocket and grabbing something, then thrusting his arms forwards, tossing an object to him. "All it takes, is a little push." Joker laughs, seeing Batman take the object to better look at it.

It was a pair of glasses, one of its lenses cracked, and the tips and pads melted. It was Glynda's glasses.

He gets up and runs away, the Joker's laughter following, mocking, him as he leaves. The view switches to a close up of the Joker's face as the SWAT's arrived to take him away, he looks to the audience and laughs even harder, looking to Glynda and James the longest, "HAHAHAHAHA!"


	11. 11

Opens up to outside a burnt warehouse, the same one Glynda died in.

There, a car is seen pulling up before Oz gets out, gun drawn. He looks around for any sign of trouble before quickly making his way into the blackened wreck of a building. Inside the husk, he peers into the darkness, "James?" he whispers. No reply. He makes his way deeper, silently going up the stairs.

In the second floor, he spots Salem and their four children huddled together, the latter four gagged with tape.

Ozpin quickly runs towards them, not seeing Salem shaking her head.

CRACK! James, moving from his hiding spot of a nearby pillar, cracks Oz over the head with his gun.

Salem gasped in fear, watching her husband go down and tearing up once she saw some blood drizzling from the headwound. The girls screamed as best they could, wanting to go and get the bad man away from their daddy.

James then disarms Oz, and rolls him over. James then turns to look at the enormous hole in the floor and tosses the weapon down it.

As he looks at the hole, the view switches to where it only shows his normal side. "This is where they brought her, Oz." He says in a dead voice. "After your people handed her over. This is where they bound her. This is where she suffered." He turns a bit to look at him, still hiding the other half of his face in the shadows, "This is where she died."

Oz, from the floor, said "I know. I was here. Trying to save her." James turns, revealing his dark side to the world. The daughters whimpered from seeing the horrible sight again, inching closer to their mommy's embrace as she whispered for them to close their eyes.

He looked at Oz in contempt, "But you didn't, did you?"

Oz shook his head in regret, "I couldn't." But James narrowed his eye, he wasn't going to have that for an answer.

Gritting his teeth, he growled, "Yes, you could've." He pointed his gun towards his own chest, "If you'd listened to me. If you'd stood up against corruption instead of doing your deal with the devil."

Oz yells at him, imploring him to listen to reason, "I was trying to fight the mob!" James snarled at him as he points his gun at Oz and moves towards him. "Don't you dare. You wouldn't dare try to justify yourself if you knew what I'd lost."

James looks at the family, "Have you ever had to talk to the person you love most?" He looks to the still down Oz. "Tell them it's going to be all right, when you know it's not?" His eyes turn a bit misty, showing some humanity left, before his expression steeled, "Well... You're about to find out what that feels like."

He points to his good eye, "Then you'll be able to look me in the eye and tell me you're sorry." James turns, and steps over to Salem who starts whimpering, and crouching down to her level, places the gun to her temple.

Salem closes her eyes, holding her babies closer. Oz reaches out with one arm, "James. Put the gun down." He shakes his head, "You're not going to hurt my family."

James looks back, and nods. "No," he starts, "just the person you love most." He cocks his gun, "So is it your wife?"

Oz desperately tries to get him to put the gun down, raising his hand in a pleading gesture. James then moves the gun to point at Oz's little girls. "Please, James..."

James moves to little Oma, and brushes the hair out of the girl's eyes with the muzzle.

Oz snaps. "Goddamit, stop pointing that gun at my family!"

James smirked at the outburst, "We have a winner." He then pulls the girl away from his mother, much to their despair.

"No!" Salem begs, stretching an arm briefly for her child, "Oz stop him! Don't let him take her!" Oma was struggling as best she could, muffling her objections as she tried kicking her way out of his grip, reaching out to her mommy. Her siblings were trying to leave their mommy's embrace and rescue their big sister, but Salem quickly withdrew her arm to hold them tightly as to not lose them too.

James walks Oma past Oz to the edge of the burnt floor, her attempts at escaping caused many in the audience to tear up.

Oz reached to the two with his right arm, "I'm sorry James! For everything! But, please. Please don't hurt my daughter."

James rubs Oma's head, but turns his head when police sires and barking dogs are heard. Outside the warehouse, cop cars descend on the building. Cops getting out of their vehicles and setting up a perimeter.

Back to the second floor, James looks at Oz furiously. "You brought your cops here?"

Oz shakes his head and raises his palm in a calming gesture, "All they know is there's a situation. They don't know who, or what." He shakes his head, "They're just creating a perimeter."

James leans his head forwards, glaring at the man. "You think I want to escape from this?!" Using his gun to point to his brunt face, "There is no escape from this!"

James then squeezes the gun a little tighter against the little girl's neck, causing her to whimper a bit. But just then, a new voice is heard. "You don't want to hurt the girl, James." The man turns and sees Batman stepping out of the shadows.

James shakes his head, "It's not about what I want. It's about what's fair!"

He points his gun to Oz, then to Batman, then to the outside world. "You thought we could be decent men, in an indecent time!" He looks between the two like a cornered animal. "You thought we could lead by example. That the rules could be bent but not break, that they would protect us..." He shakes his head, "well you were wrong."

Batman starts walking slowly to James as he continues his speech. "The world is cruel." He paused in his speech to show his coin.

"And the only morality in a cruel world is chance." He glares at Batman, "Unbiased." He turns his gaze to Ozpin, "Unprejudiced." He turns back to Batman with a growl, "Fair."

He looks at Batman, "His girl's got the same chance She had." He turns to Oz, "Fifty-fifty."

Batman steps closer, desperate, trying to get through to him. "What happened to Glynda wasn't chance. We decided to act. We three." Ozpin nods, starting to tear up from the guilt. "We knew the risks and we acted as one. We are all responsible for the consequences."

James looks at Batman. Pleading. "Then why was it me, who was the only one who lost everything?"

Batman looks into James' eyes. Emotional. He shakes his head, "It wasn't."

James, furious, shouts "The Joker chose me!" And Batman immediately responds with "Because you were the best of us!" This caused both James's to stop and widen their eyes. "He wanted to prove that even someone as good, as you, could fall."

James glares at Batman, defeated. In a bitter tone, he says "...And he was right.".

Batman glares at James, "You're the one pointing the gun, James. So point it, at the people responsible. We all acted as one. Ozpin. Me... And you." James is listening, the wheels in his deranged mind turning.

He looks between the two. "Fair enough." James eases his grip on the girl, showing the coin once more. "You first." He then flips the coin and watches it's journey, bfore catching it and seeing that it was tails. He turns back to Batman, points the gun at him, and shoots.

Batman collapses to the ground, clutching his gut.

The girls flinched as they saw Batman fall in despair, Salem holding her three daughters closer as she cries silently. The crazed man then cocks the gun again and points it at his own head as he looks to Oz, "My turn."

He flips the coin. He watches it again, and once he catches it, he sees that it landed on heads. He looks a little disappointed, pointing his gun away from himself. Finally, he points the gun back at Ozpin's daughter.

Oz tries to reason with him again, "You're right, James. Glynda's death was my fault." Reaching out to his little girl, "P...P-Please d-don't punish her... Please punish me."

James nods, "I'm about to." He looks down to Oma, seeing her start tearing up as she looks at her papa desperately. He then looks back to Oz, "Tell your daughter it's going to be all right, Oz." He nods to the man. "Lie. Like I lied." Oz looks up at him, pained.

Oz then locks eyes with his daughter. "It's going to be all right, sweetie." Oma nods, blinking her tears away. Wanting to be strong for her papa and show that it was alright.

James flips the coin one final time. His eyes follow the coin's assent, before Batman hurls himself at James and the girl. Salem screams "NOO!"

All three of them vanish over the edge. The view shifts briefly to James' coin, spinning on the floor at the edge of the hole before it stops, heads. Oz, horrified, runs to the edge and peers down.

He sees James lying at the bottom of the hole, his neck broken.

Then his daughter swings into view, hanging from Batman, who is holding onto a joist with all his strength.

Ozpin quickly reaches down to grab Oma, hauling her up with batman's help. The girl, after safely on the floor, immediately takes the tape off her mouth and races towards her mother and sisters. Salem kissing her head and her siblings hugging her tightly in relief after taking their own tape off, whispering "Thank you" repeatedly to Batman for her safe return.

However, in his efforts to raise the girl up, Batman's grip on the piece of wood slips and he falls.

Dropping, and smashing through protruding wood and pipes, Batman lands hard near James. Oz looks back to see Batman's unmoving body. He then races down the stairs, rushing over to his family's savior.

Oma looks over the edge, asking with fear in her voice, "Papa, is he okay?" Ozpin crouches at Batman's side. He gets his scroll out to call for a medic, but Batman quickly grabs his arm.

He then staggers to his feet. Oz looks up at him, "Thank you." But Batman just looks away from him, "You don't have to thank me."

Oz shakes his head as he stands up. "Yes, I do."

The two then stares down at James' body with grave expressions. "The Joker won."

He stares down at scarred side of James Ironwood. "James' prosecution, everything he fought for... Everything Glynda died for... Undone."

Oz tears up again, "Whatever chance Vale had... whatever chance you gave us of fixing our city... dies with James' reputation." He looks like a broken man now, "We bet it all on him." the tears begin to fall, "The Joker took the best of us and tore him down."

"People will lose all hope." Oz finishes as he placed a hand over his mouth to stop himself from saying anything else.

But Batman shakes his head, "No. They won't." He looks at Ozpin before looking back to the body, "They must never know what he did."

Oz looks incredulously at him. "Five dead? Two of them cops? You can't sweep that up."

Batman moves closer to James. "But the Joker cannot win." He crouches to James' body. "Vale needs its true hero." Gently, he turns James' head so the good side of his face is up. Oz looks from James' face to Batman, understanding what he meant.

Batman gazes at James' body with regret, but with determination as well. "'You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.' I could do those things," he turns his head slightly to Oz, "because I'm not a hero, not like James." He gets up and faces Oz, "I killed those people. That's what I can be."

Oz looks angrily at him, "No, you can't! You're not!" Batman hands Gordon his scroll back and says "I'm whatever Vale needs me to be. Call it in."

The screen cuts to Ozpin standing at a podium at James' funeral. Behind him is a large photograph of James with no burns smiling. "...A hero. Not the hero we deserved, but the hero we needed. Nothing less than a knight. Shining..."

Oz's voice is heard over the speech, "They'll hunt you."

Batman's voice is heard afterwards, "You'll hunt me."

The screen then cuts to Ozpin on the roof of Vale Central, axe in hand, watched by an assortment of cops and reporters. Batman's voice continues, "You'll condemn me, set the dogs on me..." Oz takes the axe to the bat symbol, each hit causing sparks from the frame before the symbol finally crashes down, the sight made the students tear up. "...because it's what needs to happen."

It then cuts to Klein burning the envelope holding the letter from Glynda, the action caused many to cry out for him to stop. "Because sometimes the truth isn't good enough..."

We now cut to Vernal, Emerald, the twins, and Neo being escorted by Sun and Neptune into a Bullhead with Sage being the pilot, the sight had many glaring at them escaping justice. They sit down and watch as the doors close on them, the audience not noticing how they're all rubbing their stomachs. "...sometimes, people deserve more."

Cutting to inside the lab, Adrian is typing his name into the sonar machine. He hits 'Enter' and watches the machine's monitors flashing red. The machine then emits sparks as it dies, many were saddened by the loss of such a device. Adrian smiles to himself, making Penny smile as she sees her father happy, before he turns and walks away, the machine sparking behind him in a final death knell. "...Sometimes people deserve, to have their faith, rewarded."

Cutting back to the warehouse, Batman hurries off, limping into the shadows with Ozpin watching in sorrow.

Oma is soon heard shouting, "Batman?!" The view switches to her as she is seen running down the stairs to join her daddy. She looks to the man who saved her, shouting out to him "Batman!" But she sees that he doesn't stop running.

She turns to her daddy, "Why's he running, papa?" Oz just stares after Batman, and with a heavy heart says "Because we have to chase him..." This caused her eyes to widen and look back to where she saw Batman last.

With the cops, the leader calls it in and orders his men to storm the building. The dogs being let go of their leashes as they get the scent and pull away from their handlers, following the shadow into the stacks of shipping containers with the cops following them...

Back to the father and daughter, Salem and the other girls joins them. Oma looks at her daddy, confused. "But he didn't do anything wrong." Ozpin nods, the sound of the dogs becoming louder and more ferocious.

Their second youngest daughter, Vivien, looks at her daddy in disbelief. "Why, papa? Why?!" With Salem looking at him in sadness.

Oz, still looking to where Batman left, says "Because he's the hero Vale deserves, but not the one it needs right now. So we'll hunt him." Cutting to the Batman he's seen lurching between shipping containers, stumbling, bleeding, before finally making it to the bat-pod. Ozpin's voice is heard over him. "... because he can take it. Because he's not our hero..." The bat-pod streaks through Vale's underground streets, the Batman's cape fluttering behind him like a wraith. "... he's a silent guardian, a watchful protector... " The Batman races up a ramp into a blinding light ahead. "A Dark Knight." The screen turns dark.


	12. Why Joker is the Hero

"This is me"

**"This is others"**

..............................................................................................................................

"And thus ends the tragic tale of Vale's true saviour."

" **Indeed, that kid was a true hero.** **Indeed, I am proud of my brother doing what was right in the end."**

"Wait, what? What are you talking about?"

" **What do mean? Batman saved that city."**

"Yeeaaah, about that... Well, by going off of what I've seen, I'm afraid that Joker, although a lying psychopath, is actually the true saviour of this Movie."

**"WHAAAAAT?!"**

"Oh yeah. You see, before the Joker came along, Vale was a mess." He turns the Movie on, showing a picture of the mob bosses in their meetings, "Organized crime ran rampant," imputing a few commands, the screen splits into multiple mugshots of many, many people. Two of which were recognized as Adam Taurus and Blake Belladonna, "and a majority of important city officials were wildly corrupt."

Shows a picture of Batman kicking ass, "The city even tolerated a renegade vigilante with no unknown fighting prowess who runs around wearing specialized armour and wielding tons of advanced gadgets without asking just how he got said experience, suit, or equipment."

Shows a picture of the fake Batman's. "Not only that, but the police's turning the other cheek for the man has caused many to take up the same cause." The view closes in on the weapons the people are using, "Only, with more deadly results."

The remainder of those people fighting crime with the intent to kill, **"That's true."** Getting other people's attention, **"These people, now that I think about it, were acting no better than gang members. Killing those people with the excuse that they were doing the city a favour. That line of thinking is dangerous."**

Nodding, then turns to the rest, "And keep in mind, that the Batman has this rule of non-killing" The screen then shows Jacques being interrogated by Batman. "Now while this may be helpful in letting the police to have him continue what he's doing and endearing himself to the hearts and minds of Vale, well I think the asshole himself puts it best by saying:"

The clip starts, **"Someone must know where he is." Jacques just looks up at him, sneering. In an ominous tone, he said "No one's gonna tell you anything. They're wise to your act, you got rules."**

Pauses the clip, "The gangs, though afraid of Batman at first, now knows that he's predictable, his rules serve to shackle him, causing the enemy to get a step ahead. Not only that..."

Then replaces the clip with a picture of a bank filled with lien, "But because he only fights the hired thugs, he's barely making a dent with the bosses lifeblood. Their wealth."

**"Too true. With their mass wealth, there would be no way for anyone to convict any of the higher-level employees nor employers."**

**"I just thought of something...Can you put the scene where we see Torchwick?"** Puts the scene start playing out. **"Okay, now stop."** The scene stops at the van opening up and Roman's dogs are seen. **"There,"** pointing at the mutts that would soon devour their former owner. **"I can assume that that wasn't normal procedure before?"**

Nodding with a smirk, getting what is being hinted at. "You are correct, You see, Roman using dogs and bigger firepower is not typically what you'd see with drug deals, am I right?" Everyone nods. "Well, that's because it's not. What it is, is an escalation of the criminals. The threat of Batman coming to kick their ass has forced the criminals to get more extreme in their behaviour. More bodyguards, higher calibre weapons, dogs." He changes the scene to a picture of the Dark Knight, "And it's all thanks to the actions of Batman."

He then shows a picture of Joker, "Now along comes the Joker and by the end of a very short time, almost all organized crime was eliminated, many of the corrupt officials were imprisoned or dead, and the city's Vigilante problem even went into hiding for nearly a decade. This was all part of Joker's masterfully executed plan."

Everyone had their jaws dropped.

Seeing this and sighs, "Let me explain." he switches the screen to the bank heist scene, "The very first time we see Joker is during a robbery of a mafia controlled bank, not for collecting the money, but to alert the gangs that their money is being actively tracked." He looks to everyone, "His heist then gets their accountant, Watts, to make off with the major crime families' collective money."

Pointing at the screen as the view shifts to a picture of a cargo haulier. "He uses this as an in to try to convince the leaders that Watts is going to squeal about their plans to Batman unless they give him half their money to get rid of the Batman first. And guess what, it worked."

Switching to the scene where Watts is in his office in Atlas, getting kidnapped by Batman. "Watts runs to Atlas for protection, and yet batman goes over there and steals his ass to give him over to the cops, just like Joker predicted."

He pauses to see if the audience follows him. Then he switches to Watts in his holding cell, "Now Watts is in a 'safe' place. With the man now trapped behind bars, and the cops under the gangs' payroll watching over him, the Joker now has easy access to him at any time." The view switched to when the MCU is engulfed in flames, "Which he eventually does."

This caused many to widen their eyes, seeing the ingeniousness of the Joker's forward-thinking. **"And with Watts wishing to sing like a bird, later on, the crime lords will know that he can't be trusted, so they would have no choice but to give in to the Joker's demands."** Points to them and nods, "Exactly."

He then switches over to the Joker murdering Junior and Raven. "Now remember, he still has to murder those that could help keep those at the top safe from prison, meaning all the corrupt officials and mob bosses that he could get his hands on. Which he does so with glee." Seeing them die, as well as the other bosses, they raised their hand like back at school. He points to her and asks "Yes?"

They stand up and says **"But wait, he was crying when he killed those people. Saying that Roman and Jacques forced him to use that weird gas on them."** The mention of said gas caused many to shiver at the effects.

Nodding, changing the scene to before the deed was done, "Correct, but look closely, do any of you notice anything off about this?" No one answers. He changes the screen to after the deaths, "How 'bout now?"

**"The new recruits to Joker's army."** said, gaining the attention of everyone. pointing to the screen as both pictures are now in the display, **"Don't you see? The people who put on the masks heavily outnumbered Joker's men, and look. Their faces."** The scene shifts to when they take off their masks, showing their horrified faces. **"They are horrified,"** it changes to them showing anger, **"and angry at the one who did this."** The view switches to the guards looking to the Joker as he 'cries'. **"And the Joker shows 'regret' in using the gas...while telling those people the names of the other remaining crime lords, ensuring that their wrath would be focused on them and gaining a loyal following as well as more soldiers once those survivors return to their hideouts and spread the word to their friends."**

The explanation had many to look at each other in shock, wondering how much of what was said was true, before looking back, was clapping his hands in approval. "Well done. Also, look at this." The scene changes as it remains split, showing Joker smiling at the familiar container of the gas in one half, and the Joker in the car playing with the same container in the other half. "Does no one find it weird that if he was truly regretful in ever using that gas, that he would be so joyful with the manufacturing of it?"

Everyone looks at the screen, remembering how happy the Joker was in obtaining the compound. **"Yes, I do believe that he said that the small amount that his men created would be enough, I just never thought of what he planned on using it for."**

Nodding, then has the screen show James walking inside the observation room of the MCU, "Now James argued for insulating the remaining men at the top, planning on using their own self-interests to use their wealth to save themselves and leaving their lower-level goons to their fate. This would, in turn, clean the streets of them, but the Joker knew that this won't work in the long-term."

The screen splits to show Batman, James, and the Joker. "Now at this point, we have 3 men battling for Gotham's 'soul', as the Joker puts it, but James and Whitley are simply playing into the Joker's greater plan. This even extends to Joker's threats to destroy a hospital." He switches the screen to show the hospital blow up. "With Batman and Ozpin's help, the Joker manages to root out the two corrupt police officials that were in Oz's unit. James even kills them later on."

The screen switches over to Oz and Port shaking hands, commemorating the former's promotion. "Hell, Oz's promotion, too, did a major service to Vale. Remember the Joker's clapping during his promotion? The Joker believed in Ozpin, one of the few officers on the force who was truly incorruptible."

**"While this may be true, that still doesn't explain how he plans on toppling the Mob's control over the city."**

Another person answered the question, **"The tower of lien. Remember the mountain of lien that the Joker turned into kindle?"** The screen changes to show the money in question go up in flames. Pointing to the money, says **"He said that Batman's main problem was that he couldn't really get close to harming the bosses wallets. But the Joker did."** Looks at the scene, tears in the eyes, **"He took half of all their money and set it aflame so that there would be no chance of them ever recovering it. And just like in the heist, he never did it for the money!"**

Nodding, "Correct, as the Joker said:"

The scene plays out. **"It's not about money..." He pulls out his scroll "...It's about sending a message." The Joker turns to watch the towering flames, the muffled screams of Watts being vaguely heard. Joker starts dialling up a number, "Everything Burns."**

He points to the screen, "He simply wanted to send a message to everyone. That he was not a criminal, he isn't someone that couldn't be bought or reasoned with. In fact, let's head to Klein's story about the man hiding in the woods, shall we?"

The scene changes to the Bat bunker with Klein reminiscing about his time in the armed forces. **Klein follows him and looks at Whitley as he continues, "I was once in Wind Path. A long time ago." He began, regaining his friend's attention. "My friends and I were working, for the local government. They were trying to buy the loyalty of local tribal leaders. Bribing them with precious stones. But their caravans were being raided in a forest north of Mistral by a bandit. We were asked to take care of the problem, so we started looking for the stones. But after six months, we couldn't find anyone who had traded with him."**

Pointing to the screen as he pauses it, looking to the audience. "His unit was using precious stones to help the government bribe the tribe leaders. And yet, the man who steals them didn't use them for his benefit. What did he do with them?"

**"He tossed them into a river."** Nodding, "Precisely, he tossed them away, because he didn't have any need for them. Just like the Joker, his story runs parallel with this man. But what you failed to see was that Klein completely glosses over why his unit was sent to find those stone. They were payment for bribing the leaders of local tribes, not bandit camps." The choice in words had many to pause as they sat in shock.

Going back to the burning cash, he points to the image, "In one move, he's almost bankrupted the gangs. Robbing them of the chance of getting that money back by selling him supplies."

Then switches back to the image of the armed vigilantes, "So now the Joker has a pretty clear path to getting rid of the Organized Crime and corrupt cop problems, but what about the Vigilante problem? Again, as we saw at the beginning, Batman's actions were inspiring other vigilantes, society cannot stand when each man takes his own brand of justice. But as the Joker sees it, he needs to be stopped, but not killed."

The scene shifts over to James' funeral. "If he were killed, he would just be a martyr, and cause many others to take up his mantle, and as we've seen, they're not exactly prepared to handle the pressure. Of course, since James was a far better symbol for the city, he would make a far better martyr."

That revelation brought many to hold themselves in fear, seeing just deep the Joker's manipulation went.

"He wanted James to feel the full pain of Glynda's death," the screen changes to where Joker is telling Batman the two addresses, "which is why he purposely tells Batman to go to the wrong address. He knows what Glynda's death would do to James' psychologically, and knowing Batman's identity, it would cloud his own judgment and cause him to make the wrong call."

He turns to face them as the scene changes to the Joker's final scene, "If the Joker really wanted James to be a villain, then he wouldn't have told Batman that he corrupted him at all, just wait for the newspapers to report on the family murder the next day." That made many of them cringe. "Batman would eventually have no choice but to kill James, knowing that this would break him psychologically, and also make him a villain, a true villain. The kind that abandons his own principles. Batman would have no choice but to disappear with his reputation forever tarnished."

The thought that the Joker planned all this was starting to scare everyone. The level of forwarding thinking, as well as expertly manipulating everyone into becoming pawns of his schemes, had much fear.

**"It's like chess. The Joker was always two steps ahead of everyone, 'I'm just ahead of the curve' as he puts it.**

"All it takes is one bad day. So, as we've seen, the mobs' treasury went up in smoke, their leaders dead and many of their lows levelled guys in jail due to the Ironwood Act created in honour of the dead man. The city was safe and peaceful, and didn't need constant vigilante justice to keep it safe."

The scene changes to the scene with the boats, "Even the display with the two boats near the end only served to prove to the people of Vale that they wouldn't turn on each other." Switches to a picture of Hazel, "He proved that there was good even in the most supposedly despicable of Vale's inmates."

They all gulp, remembering how the Joker smiled when he saw the time had passed the deadline.

The screen then shifts back to Batman, Joker, and James. "In the end, Vale is saved. And it wasn't because of James," his picture greyed out, "who died too soon to do any good except being a martyr, not Batman," the same happening to him, "who was ostracized and treated like the criminal which a vigilante really is for 8 years. Vale was saved because the Joker had done what they failed in doing." The scene shifts to Adam and Blake getting shot, "He eliminated the corrupt police," then to the money pile on fire, "he destroyed the crime lords financially," switching to Hazel, "he uplifted Vale's spirit," then to Batman and the fake Batmen, "and he got rid of the flying pest that had been corrupting Vale ever since he declared himself it's protector."


End file.
